This page brings together in one place what is known of the technical choices of the Assayag building: structure, circulation, safety, light, water, waste, parking, equipment. Every point is dated, sourced, and links to the article where it is told in full.
The dossier is open: it grows with every document found, every survey made on site. What is not established appears at the end of the page, as it is.
1. Structure and envelope
- Reinforced concrete, three distinct bodies joined at the seventh floor, arcades at street level. The choice is not only sculptural: to separate is to multiply façades, and so light and air.
- Ten levels above the shops of the ground floor: six floors of flats, a seventh floor of studios at the first setback, an eighth floor of garçonnières, laundries and maids’ rooms, then two levels of terraced duplexes.
- Permitted height under article 25 of the building regulation (1952 text): a 50° line from the opposite alignment, then a second 45° cone for the set-back floors — hence the steps. Article 27 carries the height of the wide street onto the narrow one at a corner; arcaded streets earn 1.50 m extra. Boyer's voluntary setback — the inner street — widens the street used for the calculation.
- No party wall between the flats: the syndic cites it as a feature of the building. The structure carries, the partitions divide — two distinct roles, which was not obvious in 1930 (L’Opinion, May 2024).
- Built 1930–1932; the Assayag is “one of the three masterpieces” of Marius Boyer, marked by “the absence of decoration in its smallest details, because it is, in itself, a complete work of art” (Pierre Pilven, L’Opinion, May 2024).
- Jean-Louis Cohen: with its ten levels the building “would not have been tolerated in Paris at the time”.
In full: the height rule · why three towers
2. Vertical circulation
- Three stairwells per tower: a circular stair at the centre of the core and two service stairs on the diagonal, each serving two kitchens. Legible on the plan of a typical floor, identical for the three towers.
- Regulatory widths (article 67 of the 1952 text): 1.00 m minimum for the main stair, 0.70 m for the service stair.
- Lift, goods lift and fire escape stair: the syndic lists the building's four vertical services — refuse chute, goods lift, lift, fire escape stair (L’Opinion, May 2024). These are most likely the goods lift and the lift that appear as two hexagonal shafts on the plan of a typical floor, next to the bathrooms.
- Lifts are attested from 1935 (“lift shafts”) and in the 1953 account of the explosion. Their exact number and the original machinery remain to be established.
- Octagonal core: according to Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, each tower is organised around an octagonal core that houses the lift and leads to the flats. In the hall, the lift door does indeed open a few steps from the circular stair.
- Passages between the towers on the eighth floor: doors connect the three bodies.
In full: the stairs · the eighth floor
3. Fire safety
- A 65 mm dry riser running to the top of the building, in at least one stairwell.
- A hydrant on the landing of every floor, to the pattern of the City Fire Service.
- The pump inlet enclosed in a wall cabinet at the main entrance.
- At least two staircases running the full height, reaching the ground floor “without being able to be extended directly towards the basements”, and left “always entirely clear”.
Source: article 89 of the Casablanca building regulation, 1952 text. In full: the building was made to be evacuated
4. Light and ventilation
- Large glazed screens on the stairwells: direct daylight and natural ventilation of the circulation — the air does not stagnate, one climbs in daylight.
- An open court for each flat: a well of light and air, which Boyer preferred to dark courtyards.
- Cross-shaped void under a glazed roof: at the heart of each tower, a cross-shaped void capped by a verrière carries borrowed daylight to the service rooms (Cohen and Eleb).
- Inner street: the building is “deliberately cut in two by a wide street”, and light comes down to the foot through a glazed screen the full height of the gap.
- Stair lighting in 1935, described by the Gazette de l'Électricité: “The stairs are lit by day through the lift shafts, at night by a luminous column placed in the axis of the stair.” Daylight thus arrives through the glazed lift shaft; at night a column of light holds the axis. This arrangement no longer exists.
In full: the Assayag in 1935 · the glazed screens
5. Electricity
- A power socket in every kitchen, sized for the electric cooker — “the wish of every mistress of the house”, wrote the Gazette de l'Électricité in January 1935. A power outlet in a dwelling, in 1930, is not a comfort detail: it is a bet on a way of life.
In full: a power socket in every kitchen
6. Water
- Three water tanks in the basement, fed from the city network (Lydec). They in turn feed water towers crowning each of the staircases and each of the duplexes (L’Opinion, May 2024): the water is lifted once, then comes down by gravity — the very principle of the high tank.
- Water taken up to the eighth floor: the communal laundries receive water directly into the tubs.
In full: the basements · the laundries
7. Communal laundries
- A row of reinforced-concrete tubs in rooms set between the towers on the eighth level; each tub with its washboard and its hollow for the block of soap.
- Drying terraces between the towers, on either side of the passages.
- Widened window bands at that level: they no longer light flats, but the laundries.
- Communal use died out around the 1980s with individual machines; the concrete tubs are still in place.
In full: the laundries of the eighth floor
8. Waste management
- A refuse chute serving the floors — invisible equipment, mentioned in the earliest descriptions.
- An incinerator in the basement, in the plant rooms that became the cultural space Chez Marius. The two are not independent: “the incinerator comes down through the refuse chute” (L’Opinion, May 2024) — the chute feeds the furnace directly, and the waste is never handled between the floor and the burning.
- An explosion in the incinerator is mentioned by the press in 1953, some weeks before the one on Staircase A — reported, not corroborated.
In full: the basements · 1953
9. Heating
- A boiler room in the basement, with the incinerator and the tanks: “everything that made a ten-storey building work in the early 1930s”.
In full: Chez Marius
10. Parking
- An underground garage from 1930, dug for cars that were not yet there. Such a work means digging, shoring, ventilating and draining — an expensive choice, therefore a deliberate one.
- It places the building in the generation of the Parisian “hotels for automobiles” of the 1920s. The syndic describes it as a collective car park (L’Opinion, May 2024): a facility of the co-ownership, not a sum of private boxes.
In full: a car park under the building, in 1930
11. Dwellings
- Ground floor: shops — today a café, a bar-restaurant, a grocery, a small snack bar and a business.
- First to sixth floors: four flats of three or four rooms per floor, set pinwheel-fashion around the core; each with drawing room, dining room, bedroom, hall, kitchen, bathroom, WC and its own open court.
- Careful sound insulation: two dwellings are always separated by a service stair, the lift or storerooms (Cohen and Eleb).
- Seventh floor, first setback: four studios, each with a living space of two joined areas (the bedroom opens onto the sitting room, or turns into it), a small balcony, a small separate kitchen and a bathroom with WC.
- Eighth floor: two garçonnières (private dwellings in their own right, unchanged since the origin), the laundries and the maids’ rooms with their balconies; it is also the service level, with the access to the duplexes and the doors between the towers.
- Ninth and tenth floors: three terraced duplexes, the “three little villas” of the summit. The 1935 Gazette already described an artist's duplex there.
- Secondary building: four storeys on the same principle, but made up of three “half-flowers”; between the two buildings the inner street covers the underground garage, and shops occupy the base.
- About 130 flats in all (Le360, 2023).
In full: ten levels · the eighth floor
What remains to be established
This dossier is a work site. The following points are not documented, and we prefer to say so:
- Lifts: their existence is established and Cohen and Eleb place them in the octagonal core of each tower, but their number and original machinery are unknown. To be surveyed on site.
- The two hexagonal shafts on the plan: the goods-lift-plus-lift hypothesis fits the syndic's list, but remains a hypothesis — a dimensioned plan would confirm it.
- The fire escape stair cited by the syndic: is it the diagonal service stairs, or a distinct structure?
- The luminous column of 1935: shape, height, date of removal.
- Boyer’s album, Casablanca, travaux d’architecture (1933), which publishes the perspective of the building: still to be consulted — it may contain plans and a description.
- The building permit and the original plans, in the city archives — they would settle most of the questions above.
- The 1930 wording of the building regulation: we quote the order of 2 January 1952 (deliberation of 24 July 1951), which repeals and replaces those of 1 October 1925 and 25 February 1931. These two texts remain untraced: they do not appear in the Protectorate's Bulletin officiel, and the 1931 text numbered its articles differently. The 1920 regulation, extracts of which have been published, already provided for the corner rule, the 1.50 m bonus on arcaded ways and set-back storeys at 45°, but limited the façade to the width of the street.
- The present state of the equipment is not described here: this site documents the design, not the diagnosis. That work belongs to professionals appointed by the co-ownership.
A plan, a period invoice, a site notice? Write to us — every document found enters this page.
Sources: La Gazette de l'Électricité, January 1935; permanent municipal order on roads and building in Casablanca, text of 2 January 1952, articles 25, 27, 67 and 89; plan of a typical floor (cyanotype print, private collection); Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, Casablanca. Mythes et figures d'une aventure urbaine, Hazan, chapter “Des arts décoratifs à la modernité”; Le360, May 2023; Houda Belabd, “Rétro-Verso: L’immeuble Assayag, là où le bon vieux temps est resté figé”, L’Opinion, 7 May 2024 (interview “3 questions à Pierre Pilven”).