An Art Deco manifesto
Built in 1930 on boulevard Hassan Seghir, the Immeuble Assayag raises its three towers above Casablanca. This vertical composition, which has become one of the city's recognisable silhouettes, bears the signature of Marius Boyer. Here Art Deco is not a decorative skin applied to a façade: it structures the whole building, from the drawing of the volumes to the way light and air move through it.
Why three towers?
The project answered an urban ambition of its time. In the 1920s the authorities were seeking to weld the port district and the business district into one continuous whole; Éric Labonne, secretary-general for public works, was encouraging architects and contractors to build high. Boyer's answer was a clear one: arcaded towers, brought together into a single ensemble.
The building has ten levels: seven floors of standard flats, an eighth service floor, then two levels of duplex penthouses. Three blocks, separated by narrow gaps, thus rise side by side. They remain distinct up to the seventh floor, where they finally come together to form a single volume. Each block has its own stairwell, which gives the flats genuine independence on three sides: a design at once monumental from a distance and intimate in daily use.
Light as a material
Among the building's signature features, the great verrières — the tall glazed screens that light and ventilate the stairwells — hold a place apart. They are not ornament: it is they that give the common parts direct daylight and natural ventilation. Daylight reaches down into the heart of the building and accompanies residents and visitors alike in their comings and goings, while air moves freely through the vertical circulation spaces.
This attention to everyday comfort extends even to the details of the fittings, such as the refuse chute — an avant-garde refinement in a block of flats of the early 1930s.
Living at height
On the boulevard Hassan Seghir side, generous terraces were laid out in front of the flats. As the building rises they change character: at the seventh floor they open out in three successive tiers, each crowned by a self-contained flat of about ninety square metres. At the eighth floor the window bands widen onto buanderies — communal rooftop laundry rooms —, recessed between the towers.
The eighth floor, the one that ties everything else together
This level is like no other. There are no standard flats here, but two studio flats — of the kind then known as garçonnières. The word denotes a small self-contained dwelling occupied by a bachelor; it also denoted, more discreetly, the pied-à-terre that a married man might keep in order to entertain there without his wife's knowledge. The arrangement belonged as much to the urban manners of the 1930s as to the vocabulary of the property trade.
It is on this floor, too, that the access to the penthouses of the top two levels is to be found, and where the connecting doors from one tower to the next open. The eighth is therefore not an ordinary residential floor: it is the one that ties everything else together.
This arrangement places the Assayag in an openly European line of descent: that of the buildings of the Parisian architect Henri Sauvage, who was already putting the communal laundries on the roof. In Casablanca the idea takes on a particular resonance — the washing, the sky and the city share the same top floor. This life of the heights continues on the Spaces & Air page.
The dialogue of lines and curves
The language of the building lies in a controlled tension between the rigour of its lines and the softness of its curves. This manner of writing is no mere exercise in style: for Boyer it expressed the meeting of Moroccan tradition and Western modernity, in the image of Casablanca itself.
“Between the lines of my plans and the curves of my buildings, I have sought to weave a harmonious dialogue between Moroccan tradition and Western modernity, embodying thereby the cultural bridge that Casablanca represents, a city of history and of the future.”
— Marius Boyer
Architecture that is lived in
The Immeuble Assayag is not a monument frozen in time. It is a lived-in private residence, where exhibitions, film shoots and cultural events continue to bring the place to life; visits are possible only on the occasion of these events, such as the Journées du Patrimoine, Casablanca’s annual heritage open days,. To discover the building in pictures — its towers, its arcades, its glazed screens and its terraces — turn to the gallery.
Source: Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, “Casablanca. Mythes et figures d'une aventure urbaine”, Éditions Hazan.