Periscope
Periscope #6: Desert of Modernity
‘Habitat Marocain’ is a residential project devised in the early 1950s by Swiss architects André M. Studer (1926–2007) and Jean Hentsch (1921–1984) for Sidi Othman, a suburb of Casablanca. Partially realized within a masterplan of the French authorities, the project was stopped after Morocco’s independence in 1956. The photographs on display represent the project at the design stage and as built. The timber models for the ‘Habitat Marocain’, exquisitely built by Studer’s partner, interior designer Theres Spoerry, were photographed on an unidentified beach near Casablanca. These photographs are deceptively similar to those, a few years later, of the just-completed settlement.
Characteristic of the ‘Habitat Marocain’ was the contrast between the colonial modernism and the geological age of the territory upon which it was imposed. Undeniably, the project was the result of colonial interrelations, not only in the transfer of know-how and finance, but also in the hybridisation of morphologies, typologies, and ideologies widely associated with European modernism. Despite the e!ort to incorporate regional cultural elements such as private walled patios, the formal and material language remained Western. This ambivalence is as visible in the delicate timber models as in the completed buildings. The residents perceived the architecture as a French settlement, which over time they adapted to their needs.
2025
