Marius Boyer settled in Casablanca in 1919 and would never leave again. In a little under thirty years he gave the city some of its most recognisable buildings. To follow his building sites is to watch, building by building, the idea a city had of itself change shape.
An architect trained in Paris, revealed in Morocco
Born in Marseille in 1885 and admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1904, in the atelier of Gabriel Héraud, Boyer accumulated distinctions there — a medal in the history of architecture, several second medals for submitted projects, an award of recognition from the American architects in December 1910 — before taking his diploma on 13 November 1929, ten years after he had settled in Casablanca. The detail is worth noting: the bulk of his practical training was done on Moroccan building sites, not in Parisian ateliers. His full career is traced on a dedicated page.
Between 1925 and 1929 he went into partnership with Jean Balois. It was from this collaboration that several of his major works were born.
1912: the letter of a student struck off the roll
A diploma taken at forty-four was not a matter of negligence. A document kept in the residence's archives gives the reason.
On 25 October 1912, Boyer wrote from Paris to the director of the École nationale des Beaux-Arts. He had just been struck off the roll of the École and was asking to be reinstated. The explanation he put forward is of a disarming banality: he had made, he wrote, “a serious error in interpreting the regulations”, having assumed that the academic year ran from October to October.
He then argued his case with the precision of a man who knows his figures: he had earned more than double the credits required in architecture, but not those in archaeology and the history of art; he was therefore obliged to compete at least twice during the year 1911-1912, and firmly believed he had done so by submitting a project and a sketch in October 1911.
The end of the letter is the most human. Boyer feared that “his involuntary fault” would wipe out eight years of work, “all the more so”, he wrote, “as I am within reach of the final goal”. He was also anxious about the three years left to him before the age limit.
He was reinstated, and the École proved him right: the Prix Deschaumes of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1913, a last mention on 27 January 1914. Then came the war, then Morocco. The “final goal” would wait another fifteen years.
The subject of the diploma
On 13 November 1929 Boyer was at last a qualified architect — the 143rd graduating class. The title of the project he submitted deserves to be quoted as it stands: “The dwelling of a well-to-do colonist”.
The phrase belongs to the vocabulary of his day, and the irony of the date is complete. While the architect was presenting a colonist's house in Paris, his workmen were putting up something quite different on the boulevard Hassan Seghir: a ten-storey block of flats with buanderies (communal rooftop laundries) and open terraces, commissioned by a Moroccan merchant. The school exercise looked backwards; the building site was already looking elsewhere.
The El Glaoui building (1922-1927)
Commissioned by Thami El Glaoui, pasha of Marrakech, this block on the rue Mohammed V remains one of the most imposing on the thoroughfare. A work of full-blooded Art Deco, it plays on a frontal majesty: the floors above, sheltered by an arcaded gallery, rest on marble columns linked by a series of brick arches.
The commission also says something about Boyer as a figure: he worked as readily for one of the most powerful men in Morocco as, a few years later, for merchants who had come from the North.
The villa El Mokri and the Le Vox cinema
Built for the vizier El Mokri, the villa El Mokri sets traditional Moroccan architecture in dialogue with resolutely modern touches: every detail there seeks an accord between past and present.
The Le Vox cinema occupies quite another territory. The first cinema in Africa, it bears witness to its author's avant-garde spirit and to his capacity to break out of conventional forms: pared-down lines, functional design. It very quickly became a cultural meeting place for the people of Casablanca — proof that a building can create a use as much as it serves one.
The Immeuble Assayag (1930)
On the boulevard Hassan Seghir, Boyer answered the authorities' call to build high with a composition of three arcaded towers, joined at the seventh floor, across ten storeys in all. Verrières — tall glazed screens — lighting the circulation spaces, stepped terraces, the communal laundry rooms as a crown: this is his manifesto of modern housing.
The detail of this architectural language is told in Design and Architecture and in our article “Why three towers?”. For the same client, Boyer would also build a villa with a neo-Moroccan patio.
Les Studios (1936)
On the rue Hassan II, Boyer imported a building type that came from Paris: the artist's studio. In the early twentieth century a great many were built in the French capital — vast, with tall mansarded upper floors and great glazed bays. In time these studios had become homes for a well-to-do clientele.
In Casablanca the formula answered a precise demand: that of new arrivals, often single, in search of modern accommodation. The building, functional in style, takes on the look of a ship at the street corner — a recurrent image in the architecture of the 1930s, in which the ocean liner embodied progress.
The Hôtel de ville: the synthesis
Built in the mid-1930s, the Hôtel de ville — today the residence of the Wali — draws together the threads of his work. Its silhouette recalls the Doge's Palace in Venice; its fifty-metre clock tower plays the part of a minaret of modernity; its horizontal ribbon windows, its decoration and its planning borrow from Arab-Andalusian art, mixed with Art Deco.
Inside, two large canvases by Jacques Majorelle — “La place Jemaa el-Fna à Marrakech” and “Fête au pied de l'Atlas” — adorn staircases designed in the spirit of the ocean liners. The ensemble takes its place on the administrative square, whose composition would be completed in 1937 with Edmond Brion's Banque du Maroc.
A legible evolution
Set in order, these projects tell a trajectory. The 1920s are the years of ornament under control — columns, arches, decorative schemes. The 1930s progressively strip the language bare: at the Assayag, the effect no longer comes from decoration but from volume, from light and from the void between the towers. At the Hôtel de ville, finally, Boyer reconciles the two registers in a public building that had to speak to the whole city.
Marius Boyer died in Casablanca on 25 December 1947. His file is held at the Archives nationales de France.
Frequently asked questions
What are Marius Boyer's principal works in Casablanca?
The El Glaoui building (1922-1927), the villa El Mokri, the Le Vox cinema, the Immeuble Assayag (1930), Les Studios (1936) and the Hôtel de ville, built in the mid-1930s.
Why is the Le Vox cinema important?
It was the first cinema in Africa and quickly became a cultural meeting place in Casablanca.
Who did Boyer work with?
He was in partnership with Jean Balois between 1925 and 1929, the period in which several of his major works were born.
What is there to see at the Hôtel de ville?
A silhouette inspired by the Doge's Palace, a fifty-metre clock tower, Arab-Andalusian motifs mixed with Art Deco, and two canvases by Jacques Majorelle on the staircases.
Source: Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, “Casablanca. Mythes et figures d'une aventure urbaine”, Éditions Hazan.
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