Carrières Centrales

Carrières Centrales (Moroccan Arabic: كريان سنطرال‎) is a series of modernist housing developments in Casablanca, Morocco designed in the 1950s by architects Georges Candillis, Shadrach Woods, Alexis Josic.[1] The development aimed to create utopian "habitats" that would provide alternatives to slum life for working class residents of the city. Carriere Centrale has been noted as a prominent example of modernism within the Maghreb.[1]

Carrières Centrales
General information
LocationHay Mohammadi

Casablanca

 Morocco
Coordinates33.583°N 7.564°W / 33.583; -7.564
Completed1952

History

Michel Écochard was appointed Director of the Service de l’Urbanisme et de l’Architecture of French Morocco in 1946. Following a multidisciplinary study of the nation's housing needs, Écochard established a plan to develop a number of housing projects for the working poor at the outskirts of Morocco's major cities. Écochard conceived of a substantial program that included a specially designed 8 x 8 meter grid plan.[2]

Carrières Centrales, a site the Hay Mohammadi district of Casablanca, was the first project to test Écochard's design. The development aimed to provide affordable housing for individuals working in a nearby factory and French homes.[2][3]

In 1952, Georges Candilis, Shadrach Woods, and Alexis Josic—the architects Écochard assigned to the project—designed a series of utopian modernist modular complexes for the site that additional educational, administrative, and religious facilities.[2] Influenced by Le Corbusier's Unité d'habitation and the communal nature of slum life, the resulting mid-rise complexes featured highly collective multilevel living exemplified by myriad balconies.[4][5] The site's buildings became known by the residents as Semiramis and Nid D'Abeille as references to their visual similarities to honeycombs and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon respectively.[6]

Since their construction, many of the complex' residents have modified the buildings significantly, most frequently by walling off the original balconies.[1]

gollark: Existential risks are very scary that way. Especially universal ones.
gollark: I figure if you have the super-advanced technology which is necessary to make this somewhat work, you might as well try and have an actual nice modern-ish society based on that.
gollark: That sounds problematic if you run into bugs or something.
gollark: I guess you could maybe do that if you had very advanced technology to do that with in the first place? It would probably be hard if it broke and you had to edit it in some way, though.
gollark: Techno-primitivism: because advanced technology totally doesn't need expensive large infrastructure to make and maintain!

References
  1. Ferrantea, Annarita (2011). "Retrofitting and adaptability in urban areas" (PDF). Procedia Engineering. 21.
  2. "Amènagement Urbain de la Ville de Casablanca | South section, Carrières centrales". Archnet. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  3. "The Housing Grid by Michel Ecochard | Model House". transculturalmodernism.org. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  4. Heuvel, D. van den; Mesman, M.; Quist, W. (2008-09-11). The Challenge of Change: Dealing with the Legacy of the Modern Movement: Proceedings of the 10th International DOCOMOMO Conference. IOS Press. ISBN 9781607503712.
  5. Teerds, Hans (2005-12-15). "Candilis-Josic-Woods: dialectic of modernity". ArchiNed (in Dutch). Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  6. Heuvel, D. van den; Mesman, M.; Quist, W. (2008-09-11). The Challenge of Change: Dealing with the Legacy of the Modern Movement: Proceedings of the 10th International DOCOMOMO Conference. IOS Press. ISBN 9781607503712.


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