Negotiating Colonial Urbanism: Re-imagining the role of madina in Tangier, Morocco

Organized in three parts, this Master’s Design Study [MDS] book summarizes the efforts of a year-long exploration of finding a way to spatialize the lessons to be learned from the urban experiments of Michel Ecochard and members of Team 10 [ATBAT Afrique, GAMMA Group] that took place under the French Protectorate during the mid-twentieth century in Casablanca, Morocco. While a great deal of post-colonial scholarship exists on this topic [Avermaete, Cohen, Eleb, et. al.], missing from this body of work is a rigorous attempt to offer mappings, diagrams, architectural, and urban design strategies that can participate in the negotiation process between colonial modernism and the rich culture of Morocco. More pressing today is the necessity for strategies that can begin to negotiate between this existing culture and globalization.