Modern architecture and the lessons of vernacular shantytown housing in Morocco

Abstract. Vernacular architecture offers responses that are adapted to its inhabitants needs and in harmony with its environment. This observation celebrated in 1964, during the exhibition entitled “Architecture without architect” by Bernard Rudofsky at the MOMA in New York, brought to light the values of vernacular architecture and recognized it as an unprecedented source of inspiration for modern architecture. However, as early as the 1940s, even before Rudofsky’s exhibition, architectural practices initiated in Morocco began to demonstrate an interest in vernacular architecture. The modern architects of the CIAM Morocco Members developed new architectural approaches focused on the study of the formal diversity of vernacular housing in their connection to the lifestyles of the inhabitants. Far from any stigmatization, the attitude of these modern architects will broaden, from this period, the analysis of the vernacular in architecture to the typology of the shantytown. An achievement of popular inventiveness, the vernacular habitat of the shantytown restores for these architects attributes comparable to those of traditional vernacular environments. These approaches which were presented at the CIAM 9 in 1953, were drawn up as a reformulation of the principles of modern architecture. Although there are trends that focus on shantytowns as vernacular architecture that can solve the problem of housing and tomorrow’s cities, the approaches of CIAM-Maroc architects focused on the shantytown are manifested as innovative avant-garde architectural attitudes. Thus, this paper focuses on studying the formulations of these modern architects based on the shantytown, to show the practical values of this vernacular typology and highlight the dialectical relationship between the teachings of vernacular architecture of the shantytown and the renewal of modern architecture.