The large-scale housing projects in the outskirts of Casablanca had been developed for local migrants who came from rural areas. In Morocco the Service de l’Urbanisme of Michel Écochard which co-operated with ethnologists, geographers and sociologists, was asked for a response to the improvised construction by the rural population, of hut settlements – so-called Bidonvilles – at the outskirts of cities like Casablanca and Rabat. The strategies of the Service de l’Urbanisme in Morocco directed by Michel Ecochard varied from the re-ordering of the slum settlements (restructuration) to temporary re-housing (relogement), and finally to the creation of new housing estates (habitations à loyer moderé) based on a standard grid. The architects assumed that new architectural designs would foster an evolution of new – modern – lifestyles and saw their architecture as the catalyst of an individual as well as a collective process of modernization. The new housing complexes – the Ain Chok, Carrières Centrales, El Hank, and Sidi Othman, among others – were divided into developments for Muslims, Jews, and Europeans. The estates for Muslims were built farther away from the colonial European city on the edge of an empty intermediate zone known as the Zone Sanitaire. It had been created by the protectorate and was bordered by circular roads and a motorway. The Carrières Centrales developments were built next to one of the largest bidonvilles settlements to house growing numbers of rural immigrants in Casablanca. The Cité Horizontale was tested as a series of low-rise patio houses, while the Cité Verticale was tested as a series of high-rise patio houses. The idea behind this field study was to create homes for workers and local employees who worked for the protectorate. However, the rent was so high for most of the people living in the bidonvilles that few could afford a flat that was “built for them.”(MvO)



Sources:

Avermaete, Tom. Another Modern: The Post-war Architecture and Urbanism of Candilis-Josic-Woods. Rotterdam: NAi, 2005.

Cohen, Jean-Louis and Monique Eleb. Casablanca: Colonial Myth and Architectural Ventures. New York: Monacelli Press, 2002.

Eleb, Monique. “An Alternative Functionalist Universalism: Ecochard, Candilis and ATBAT-Afrique.” In Anxious Modernisms Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture edited by Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, 55-74. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.