The Former Abattoirs or the Former Slaughterhouses of Casablanca (, ) were constructed under the
French protectorate in Morocco
The French protectorate in Morocco (french: Protectorat français au Maroc; ar, الحماية الفرنسية في المغرب), also known as French Morocco, was the period of French colonial rule in Morocco between 1912 to 1956. The prote ...
in 1912 in the neighborhood of
Hay Mohammadi
Hay Mohammadi or Hay Mohammedi ( ar, الحي المحمدي) is an arrondissement of eastern Casablanca, in the Aïn Sebaâ - Hay Mohammadi district of the Casablanca-Settat region of Morocco. As of 2004 it had 156,501 inhabitants.
Notable res ...
in
Casablanca
Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...
.
History
The one-time slaughterhouses of Casablanca were constructed by architect George-Ernest Desmarest in 1912 and modernized in 1922 by
Henri Prost
Henri Prost (February 25, 1874 – July 16, 1959) was a French architect and urban planner. He was noted in particularly for his work in Morocco and Turkey, where he created a number of comprehensive city plans for Casablanca, Fes, Marrakesh ...
.
They were expanded in 1951, then closed in 2002, substituted by new slaughterhouses in the periphery of Casablanca.
Abandoned since 2002, the approximately 14 acre complex became host to a public art movement, with free performances, workshops, and concerts.
''Theatre Nomade'' is still based there.
Architecture
The Former Abattoirs were built in a style inspired by
''Neo-Mauresque'', or
Moorish Revival
Moorish Revival or Neo-Moorish is one of the exotic revival architectural styles that were adopted by architects of Europe and the Americas in the wake of Romanticist Orientalism. It reached the height of its popularity after the mid-19th centur ...
, as well as
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
.
References
Further reading
''L'Batwar - Fabrique culturelle des Abattoirs de Casablanca - Histoire d'une reconversion.''
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen (born 20 July 1949) is a French architect and architectural historian specializing in modern architecture and city planning. Since 1994 he has been the Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture at New York Universi ...
, Najib Taki,
Driss Ksikes
Driss Ksikes (born 1968 in Casablanca) is a Moroccan journalist.
Career
He had been an editor-in-chief of the francophone Tel Quel magazine. In 2006, he left TelQuel to be the editor-in-chief and director of publication of the arabophone and ...
. Sirocco. 2014. 978-9954-32-955-9.
Buildings and structures in Casablanca
{{Morocco-geo-stub