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: seven floors of ordinary flats, an eighth service floor, then two levels of duplex penthouses.
- Permitted height under article 25 of the building regulation: 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.
- 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 68): 1.00 m minimum for the main stair, 0.70 m for the service stair.
- Lifts: attested from 1935 (“lift shafts”) and in the 1952 account of the explosion. Number, original position and machinery remain to be established.
- 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. 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.
- 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
- Water tanks in the basement, among the original technical installations.
- 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.
- An explosion in the incinerator is mentioned by the press in 1952, some weeks before the one on Staircase A — reported, not corroborated.
In full: the basements · 1952
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.
In full: a car park under the building, in 1930
11. Dwellings
- Four flats per floor, set pinwheel-fashion around the core; each with drawing room, dining room, bedroom, hall, kitchen, bathroom, WC and its own open court.
- Eighth floor: a service level — laundries, two garçonnières (private dwellings in their own right, unchanged since the origin), access to the penthouses, doors between the towers.
- The last two levels: duplex penthouses, the “three little villas” of the summit. The 1935 Gazette already described an artist's duplex there.
- 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: how many, where, with what original machinery? The sources mention them only in passing.
- Two hexagonal shafts appear on the plan of a typical floor, near the bathrooms. Goods lift, refuse chute, ventilation? Not identified.
- The luminous column of 1935: shape, height, date of removal.
- 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 version carrying the 1951 deliberations, which amends the orders of 1925 and 1931.
- 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, articles 25, 27, 68 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; Le360, May 2023.