Housing Diaries - Importing Modernism in Casablanca

Throughout the 20th century, European modernist architecture has traveled across the globe. During the colonial era, modernist approaches to “architecture as urban planning” have been imposed on the many colonies around the world, by testing modern modes of mass construction in the so-called colonial laboratories. Specifically, under French rule, the North African region experienced a massive modernist intervention in the 1940s and 1950s, where European architects and planners were commissioned to provide new planning concepts and new modes of living for the colonized. In that sense, the term vernacular modernism emerged, as those who were assigned to design the new world in the colonies attempted to merge indigenous modes of living with western modernist ideals. In order to absorb the enormous rural exodus, planners provided mass-housing estates to accommodate the large numbers of migrants seeking work and life in big cities, moreover, to defuse the issue of informal housing settlements, the so-called Bidonvilles. Casablanca, Alger, and Tunis are just a few examples, where these attempts to offer affordable housing to a local working-class, were more often intertwined with an idea of demarcation and segregation between the colonialists and the colonized. The reactions to these societal and architectural impositions were slow and subtle forms of colonial opposition, often translated into building transformations and appropriations.

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The new housing estates offered an ostensible solution to the evergrowing challenge of the Bidonvilles

The aim of this investigation was to highlight and understand the process of transformation. The results should serve as a critical revision of European modernism and post-modernism and give insights on key factors, that influenced our past and present-day modern modes of planning and construction.

In a first step, we attempt to look closer at the city of Casablanca. A city that rapidly gained its relevance as a strategic trade point between Europe and North Africa and undoubtedly became a hot spot for modernist experiments in the early and mid-20th century, especially between the 1940s and 1950s. During this period the city has experienced a massive extension outside the city walls of the old medina, planned by European architects such as Albert Tardif, Henri Prost and Michel Ecochard, while the migrating masses settled in makeshift quarters, known as Bidonvilles. As to the planned extensions of the city, planners designed large-scale housing projects to accommodate the local population, by providing culture specific architectural features combined with the principles of classic modernism. Projects such as Ain Chock (1936–52), Carrieres Centrales (1951-55) by Michel Ecochard, Le Plateau (1957) by Gaston Jaubert, El Hank (1952-1953) and Cite Verticale (1952) by the architecture collaborative ATBAT-Afrique (Georges Candilis, Shadrach Woods, Vladimir, Bodiansky) were modernist mass housing projects that soon enough after their completion would experience a wave of transformation by their occupants. Five decades later the alterations and appropriations that have occurred, range from interiorizing balconies, sealing openings, adding new ones and adding new stories on top of the original buildings, densifying the neighborhoods to extents that the original designs are nowadays almost unrecongnizable.

Bournazel © Foto: Mathias Petersheim

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Habitat Mutation #01

"In-Fill"
Immeubles Sidi Othman | André Studer & Jean Hentsch | 1952/53

Block N | Original State in 1953 | © Drawing: Eva Hoffmann

Block N | Transfored State in 2018| © Drawing: Eva Hoffmann

Block N | Original State in 1953 | © Drawing: Eva Hoffmann

"In-Fill"The Immeubles Sidi Othman located in the southern part of the city underwent several processes of transformation. Not only did the original design by Swiss architects Andre Studer and Jean Hentsch change due to military restraints on urban planning in Casablanca in the 1950s, but also the three building blocks. A radical alteration by the residents occured just a few years after the completion. The three building blocks offer similar architecture elements, which in return gives them their unique character. Visible structural elements like concrete columns span over three stories and support contorted balconies/patios. In those patios lie the very essence of the design, as well as the transformation of the buildings.

Having 1,80m high walls the patios invited residents to fill in the voids between them with bricks. The very same formal construction method that is used in many countries today. A walk in some of the flats showed the transformation of the balcony into a kitchen at the bottom and another sun terrace at the top with a new slab added in between. Though as unplanned and disruptive as these transformations seem, they are undoubtedly a proof that through the simple and yet complex intertwinement of formal and informal construction modes, residents have managed to alter the space they are inhabiting to their own individual needs.

Transfomations recorded in 2018 © Drawing: Eva Hoffmann

Block O | Original State in 1953 | © Drawing: Omar Mekati

Block O | Transformed State in 2018 | © Drawing: Omar Mekati

Block O | Original State in 1953 | © Drawing: Omar Mekati

© Foto: Omar Mekati

Block P | Original State in 1953 | © Drawing: Vanessa Salm

Block P | Transformed State in 2018 | © Drawing: Vanessa Salm

Block P | Original State in 1953 | © Drawing: Vanessa Salm

© Foto: Vanessa Salm

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Habitat Mutation #02

"On-Top"
Derb Jedid | Elie Azagury | 1952-1957

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Habitat Mutation #03

"Extend"
Cité Plateau | Gaston Jaubert & Pierre Coldefy | 1957-60

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Selected Bibliography

Avermaete, Tom, Karakayali, Serhat, Osten, Maria, Colonial Modern. Aesthetics of the Past. Rebellions for the Future, London 2010
Roesler, Sascha, Habitat Marocain Documents. Dynamics between Foraml and Informal Housing, Zürich, 2015
Avermaete, Tom, Casciato, Maristella, Casablanca Chandigarh. A Report on Modernization, Zürich, 2014
Fundementalists and other Arab Modernisms, Kingdom of Bahrain National Participation Architecture from the Arab World. 1914-2014 (a Selection) 14th International Architecture Exhibition la Biennale di Venezia, 2014
Coen, Jean-Louis, Eleb, Monique, Casablanca: Colonial Myths and Architectural Ventures, Monacelli, New York, 2003
Roger, Diener (ETH Studo Basel), The inevitable specificity of cities, Lars Müller Publishers, Zürich, 2015
L’ architecture d’aujourd’hui : AA ; première revue internationale d’architecture modern/ 26.1955, Nr. 58-63, Paris
L’ architecture d’aujourd’hui : AA ; première revue internationale d’architecture modern/ 26.959, Nr.85-87, Paris
Casamemoire.org
Mutualheritage-casablanca.univ-tours.fr
www.studio-basel.com/projects/casablanca-15/index.html
www.studio-basel.com/projects/casablanca-08/index.html
www.studio-basel.com/projects/casablanca-05/index.html

Research project "Importing Modernism" | May 2018 | Technical University of Munich | Department for Design, Rebuilding and Conservation | Univ. Prof. Andreas Hild | M.Sc. Khaled Mostafa | Participating students - Omar Mekati, Vanessa Salm, Eva Hoffmann, Viktoria Kelderer, Matthias Petersheim, Michaela Burkhardt, Johannes Ewerbeck, Max Panhans, Lukas Conrad, Michaela Maurer, Quirin Großlau, Nils Fröhling, Markus Westerholdt, Sarah Gemoll, Marc Mair, Laura Eberhardt

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