Published in Rethinking the Future Keraton Kasepuhan, one of the oldest royal palaces in Cirebon, West Java, offers a remarkable record of centuries of cultural exchange. Through its architecture, the palace reveals how Hindu-Buddhist, Javanese, Islamic, Chinese, and European influences became embedded in its architectural identity. The essay examines the palace’s historical transformations, spatial organisation, symbolic elements, and successive restoration…
-
-
Published in Rethinking the Future This essay explores the evolution of Casablanca’s architectural identity through the intersection of Néo-Mauresque, Art Deco, and emerging modernist architecture during the French Protectorate. The essay examines how architecture became a medium through which French colonial ambitions, Moroccan cultural references, and changing social aspirations were negotiated. Tracing the city’s transformation from the early Néo-Mauresque architecture…
-
Published in Rethinking the Future Often called a cathedral, Casablanca’s Sacré-Cœur was in fact the Protectorate city’s main Catholic church. Built over twenty years to Paul Tournon’s design, it fell into disuse before Abderrahim Kassou’s renovation gave it a second life as a cultural centre. Read the original publication →
-
Published in Rethinking the Future Natural light is the one element that carries an architect’s design decisions, from layout and materials to colour and scale. Two rooms can share the same enclosed composition, like a monastic cell and a prison cell, yet the placement, intensity, and framing of daylight decide whether one feels spiritual and the other confining. This essay…
-
Studio KO's Musée Yves Saint Laurent is easy to admire for its facade, its material choices, and its relationship to the city around it. What is less discussed is what happens once a visitor is inside, how the plan holds up against the confidence of the entry sequence. This piece takes both questions seriously, moving from the building's concept to…
-
Casablanca's former Anfa airport, once located at the city's edge, has been gradually engulfed by urban expansion. In 2007, its 350-hectare site became available for redevelopment: an opportunity to reinvent the city from the center outward. Urbanist Manuel de Solà, reflecting on the competition shortly after its conclusion, describes the project as part of a broader international phenomenon in which…
-
On December 11, 2026, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will open its doors twenty years after it was first announced. That gap between announcement and opening, and the fact that its architect did not live to cross it, is worth pausing on before getting to the building itself. Twenty years is long enough for an architectural "brand" to be tested, refined,…
-
Published in Morocco World News A comparative look at Ricardo Bofill’s two campuses for UM6P in Benguerir and Rabat, tracing how an identical architectural vocabulary can be justified by two entirely different logics, one rooted in site and climate, the other in building a coherent university brand. Read the original publication →
-
At 250 meters, the Mohammed VI Tower is now the tallest building in Morocco. Rising above the Bouregreg Valley between Rabat and Salé, it is reportedly visible from as far as 50 kilometers away, a presence designed by Rafael de la Hoz and Hakim Benjelloun that dominates the region's skyline from nearly every angle of approach. The instinct, faced with…
-
In the Maârif district of Casablanca, a small public garden occupies a plot of land with an unusually loud history. For nearly fifty years, the site held an arena hosting bullfights, boxing matches, and international concerts, before its demolition in 1971 that left the land vacant for decades. Today, following a 2024 renovation, it holds a quiet public garden. What…