Urban generations: Post-colonial cities
01-03 October 2004
Conference Abstracts
25. Hamdouni, Mohamed; Ecole Natonale d’Architecture-Rabat,
Morocco: "Mimicking Colonial Design: The Rhetoric of Urbanism in
Contemporary Morocco"
In the mid 1980's the Moroccan State initiated a new
politics of urban design. The paper discusses that politics and
argues on the base of discursive and architectural evidence that
despite its apparent rejection by post-colonial Moroccan architects
the French colonial architectural legacy has been a central source
of inspiration for contemporary architectural policy and practice.
Taking the lead from observations in the field, and leaning on two
case studies, the paper presents the different components of this
architectural reformulation and analyzes the visual rhetoric it
entails. Hence it reveals how a process which is presented by the
actors as a return to a true identity rooted in the Arab-Islamic
cultural traditions, should be understood instead as a post-colonial
self orientalization. In its conclusion it points out the different
agencies at work and the theoretical questions that are raised by
this process.
