portfolio 2008-2013

RHITA

CADI-SOUSSI

From

ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL OFVERSAILLES

&

UNIVERSITY OF MONTREAL

SUMMARYWork by

RHITA CADI SOUSSI

1.JOnAS and the sparkling chairs

2.nOUKHALA a few palm prints

3.TURRITOPSIS the nutricula

4.COnDOMInIUM a chinese conquest

5.ARCHITECTURE is music

6.MY THEATER is canadian

7.LET’S gET physical !

8.WELCOME TO french suburbia

9.ARTICLES, suburbs suicides, casablanca 50’s - a morrocan

way of life, photography of immediate city future

jOnAS & THe SpARklIng CHAIRSWe designed a space from « L’exil et le royaume » by Albert Camus, realized a short video whi-le Caruso is singing una lacrima furtiva for Cluzot’s idea of «L’enfer» : Romy Schneider. It’s a projec-tion of a text without image, words transformed into space, parasitized with thousands of glitter. We de-signed the plan of an imaginary world of loneliness Watch it on Vimeo ! : http://vimeo.com/40616989

under the supervision of Christophe Atabekian & Suzanne Stacher, featuring L. Rambert, D. Ro-que, L. Moscatelli, O. Madinier, winter 2012, école nationale supérieure d’architecture de Versailles

nOUkHAlA, A FeW pAlM pRInTSNowadays, palm trees are everywhere, art, fashion, design : we are entering a new era where the international emblem is a tree with a bit of glow, glory and decadance victim of its californian Bret Eston Ellis shallow smell.Textile. Not something i had to rethink, not something i had to reinvente, i had to create. According to Jean-Marx Colard, palm tree is the symbol of globalization : Miami/kitsch & Cannes/exotic. Technique : heat transfer paper of infinite combinations of Ed Ruscha’s famous palm tree manipulated on Photoshop and different fabrics.

under the supervision of Denyse Roy, winter 2013, university of Montreal

TURRITOpSIS THenUTRICUlA Beyond myths, religion or science, death is a matter of questionning, and always related to our body. Since the egyptians, we tried to maintain this matter of fear & fantasy. 21st century society is now always searching for conformity in youth. Everyone will someday look the same, running after the TURRIPTOSIS NUTRICULA * (immortal medusa), all of us struffed animal trophees. Clonning will let us live longer, until madness. Experien-cing eternity, and make everybody beautiful, again and again, forgetting our identity to vanish into the mass.

under the supervision of David Saltiel, featuring L. Rambert, C. Brunengo, R. Che-deville, A. Huet, winter 2011, école nationale supérieure d’architecture de Versailles

COnDOMInIUM, CHIneSe COnqUeSTThe condominium is an idea of ordering the mess, by creating a new kind of space hierar-chy : the chinese Monarchy is happening in Aubervilliers. Why did i choose urban density on this trumendous empty land ? In a landscape that gathers social, urban and economic dispari-ties, that experience everyday the huge parisian shadow, the location needed something different, something big : the grid as the control of that puzzled land. The absence of paysage became a land to conquere. As for the chinese population, they live differently and their way of life is strongly attached to traditions.

under the supervision of Emeric Lambert (Parc architects), spring 2012, école nationale supérieure d’ar-chitecture de Versailles

ROOFTOp

We studied archetypes, the siheyuan, and the anti-monofonctional nei-ghborhood. This is 10 000 habitants in 1000 appartments. 10 000 chinese in 1000 rethinked siheyuan. This is an urban dystopia, an alarm to all the «banlieues françaises», «la ceinture de Paris». This is the luxury of protest. My building is focusing on the chinese hierar-chy : each floor is different from another, and every appartment is a world itself. There are a lot of common spaces (gardens, terraces,..) It is a solution to the contemporary french social housing, which rather innovating, prefers to solve the current crisis of the social housing. It’s an alternative answer that helps think of closer lifestyle and more common space to restore a social space to this society of appearance.

1000 logements à Aubervilliers - cadi soussi rhita - encadré par emeric lambert

ARCHITeCTURe ISMUSICRethinking the architectural process and working with others (données) to create a building. We disso-ciated all the principal components that compose a building, then we tried different combinations un-til we obtain the one that is adequate to the place we chose : weather (sun, wind, snow..), topogra-phy,.. but also the inner fonctionment of the building influenced theparameters : walls, circulations, structure & envelopps. Three trials, three programs and three hypothetical sites. One music & 108 combinations.

under the supervision of Jacques Moussafir, winter 2012, featuring L. Rambert & A. Watremez école nationale supérieure d’architecture de Versailles

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MY THeATeR IS CAnADIAnIt is a tribute to classical music, to classical order : its a continious scheme of bands, going from the road and entering the building in an assumed radicalism in plan, that we erase with the transparen-cy of the materials (glass, plexi, translucence and transparence, white and concrete,mirrors and inox..)The inevitable theater centrality made me surround it with two public spaces : a court that could be public and attached to the street, and an outdoor cinema on the roof. A contradictive tension that results from the principal constraint : the main facade had to be opaque, no window allowed.

under the supervision of Hal Ingberg, winter 2013, featuring N. Louagie university of Montreal

VISIONS

DE LA BRIQUE

STRATÉGIE URBAINE

1 PARCELLE, 570 M2 2 UN RECUL = COUR =SOLEIIL RDC EXPOSITION SUD

OPACITÉ ARTICULATION

? BLANC !

1 UNE FAÇADE EXPOSÉE SUDopaque mais lumineuse ?

2 UNE COULEUR : LE BLANCcapte la lumière ? la réfléchit ? se détache du contexte

I. URBAn STRATegY

II. MAnAgIng OpACITY

STRATÉGIE URBAINE

4 DES BANCS SUR LA RUE = DÉCOR =AFFICHAGE

3 SALLE DE RÉP. + CINÉMAPLEIN AIR

OPACITÉ ARTICULATION

3 DES RELIEFS : DES OMBRES comment créer un pattern d'ombres infinies?

4 3 MATÉRIAUX : 1 STRATÉGIE & 3 MODULESla brique, le verre, la pierre

BRIQUE : UNE OMBRE

VERRE : UNE TRAME

PIERRE : UNE TEXTURE

- DIMENSIONS : 3" x 10" x 3" soit 80 mm x 260 mm x 80 mm

- COULEUR : blanc

- TYPE DE BRIQUE : Alaska White Velour WT

- NOM DU FABRICANT : BELDEN

- TYPE D'ARTICULATION : 1/2 running bond + position stretcher

- DIMENSIONS :

- COULEUR : blanc

- TYPE DE VERRE : Cridecor, verre sérigraphié pouvant être courbé

- NOM DU FABRICANT : CRICURSA

- TYPE DE STRUCTURE :

- DIMENSIONS : 300 mm x 300 mm x 200 mm

- COULEUR : blanc

- TYPE DE PIERRE : Alabama marble

- NOM DU FABRICANT : Polycor

- TYPE D'ARTICULATION : Une trame espacé de 300 mm dans les deux directions répartit les éléments de pierre. Ces derniers observent un décala- ge variant de 0 à 150 mm dans la profondeur selon leur répartition sur la trame de nuances.

PROGRAMME ET FONCTIONS

5 ESPACES DE SUPPORT SCÈNE ESPACES DE S. II 6

SALLESALLE

HALL HALLCOURCOUR


HALL

1 COUR HALL 2

III. pROgRAM & FUnCTIOnS


3 ADMINISTRATION

ADMINISTRATIONHALL

SALLE

SALLE DE SPECTACLE 4

HALLCOURCOUR


7 SALLE DE RÉPÉTITION + CINÉMA PLEIN AIR + CIRCULATIONS PUB-LIC

SALLE

HALL

SALLER.

CINÉ

COUR

R+1

R+2

R+3

ROOFTOp

The aim was therefore to assume the inner combination work of transpa-rency, light and opacity, by working on the facade’s surface : 3 different propositions (brick, stone and glass)of a white and textured frame facade that makes light reflections and shadows : a simple dynamic related to the agitation of saint-laurent street, hiding the main opacity : the theater.

INITIATION PROGRAMMATIQUE

5 SALLES/30m2

4 SALLES/50m2

2 SALLES/100m2

1 SALLE/300m2

STOCKAGE/ 200m2

PATIO /150M2

CAFÉTÉRIA/ 150M2

ACCUEIL PRINCIPAL/ 200M2

VESTIAIRES /250M2

ADMINISTRATION/100M2

PÔLE NUMÉRIQUE/ 200M2

3 PÔLES7

leT’S geT pHYSICAl !The building is a continuous ribbon disconnected from the soil which has its own logic of functionment. It’s a dy-namic of discontinuity in opposition with the street. The building unfolds in continuous ribbon that can not de-duct the interior space from the outside. it is maintained by bearing walls emerging from the ground.The dynamic discontinuity is consistent with the program space living: basketball ,tennis courts, etc. as nested within the soil.The work actually focused on scales, from urban to detail. The whole process was also directed by the fact that we had to organize all the programs so they can work together is a fluid system, easily recognizable.

under the supervision of Rémi Rouyer & Sébastien Rinckel, winter 2011, featuring A. Sofferécole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Versailles

INITIATION PROGRAMMATIQUE

WelCOMe TOFRenCH SUBURBIAObservation. Before having any kind of big strategy for a revolutionary change, our method was to observe the way people lived in a territory of evident housing majority. In this full but empty landscape of an old french idea of «modernity», the inhabitants have to deal with precariousness of their everyday life. So the oubvious but still, complicated answer, was to bring mixity to this result of «zonage», and also make a difference by working from inside to outside : rethink the HLM apartment, reorganizing private life to have an impact on public interactions. The french suburbia was all about ideology, and today’s architecture and urbanism is all about reality : get away from utopia, and hence from «les grands ensembles» without choosing to destroy them.

under the supervision of Laurent Machet & Patrice Novian, winter 2011, featuring A. Sofferécole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Versailles

la courneuve

saint-denis

pantin

paris

tramway (ligne t1 : gare saint-denis rer / noisy le-sec)

bus 152porte de la villette / le blanc mesnil

bus 170gare saint denis / porte des lilas

bus 173porte de clichy / la courneuve

bus 150porte de la villette / pierrefitte stains

bus 249porte des lilas / dugny centre-ville

bus 250fort d’aubervilliers / gonesse la fontaine cypière ZIbus 139saint-ouen / porte de la villette

bus 302gare du nord / la courneuve 6 routes

bus 65gare de lyon / mairie d’aubervilliers

les routes nationales(NO3 / N2)

autoroute (A86)

métro ligne 7mairie d’ivry / la courneuve 8 mai 1945

rer d

vélos en libre service - « velcoms »4 stations :- bordier- casanova / trillon- bibliothèque saint john perse- mairie d’aubervilliers

la courneuve

saint-denis

pantin

paris

grandsÊsitesÊdÕhabitatsÊcollectifs

stationÊdÕessence

b‰timentsÊadministratifs

Žcoles

petitsÊimmeubles

pavillonnaires

serres

garages

marchŽ habitats

services

Žquipements

garagesMONTFORT

PUITSÊCIVOT

PONTÊBLANC

LESÊPRESÊCLOS

LAÊFRETTE

LAÊPLANCHETTEOUÊLESÊPONCEAUX

LAÊRAIEÊTORTILLE

MONTFORT

PUITSÊCIVOT

PONTÊBLANC

LESÊPRESÊCLOS

LAÊFRETTE


LAÊRAIE

MONTFORT

PUITSÊCIVOT

PONTÊBLANC

LESÊPRESÊCLOS

LAÊFRETTE


LAÊRAIE

3Êm

69Êm

habitations

PANORAMA

DENSITY, TEMPORALITY & MONOFUNCTIONALITY

HISTORY, HEIGHTS & TYPE OF FRAMES

NETWORK CULTURE ADMINISTRATION SPORT

I. STUDYIng TYpOlOgY

II. BRIngIng MIXITY

SUBURBS SUICIDeSTHe COllApSe OF THe AMeRICAn DReAM

It is a dream that Americans have never ceased to love, between glory ,love and decay, the life of a family living in the suburbs ,affording a pavilion , a family car and hou-se appliances, will both build and destroy America.We started by selling a car, then two, then millions of others.

We sold with a universe that seemed indispensa-ble. We had also managed to sell,the whole pieces of landscapes of lined houses, and which can not be accessible only by car. Like a piece of paradi-se, a few kilometers from the bustling city and un-bearable, we found calm and idealized family life.New York 1939. The country then comes out of an unprecedented economic crisis and the future that year was an event to be missed. The Center of all the attractions there were in the city, the fair expecta-tions: we presented to the mass the world they are waiting for, a world that tomorrow would be a show:

« To help us get a glimpse into the future of this infi-nished world above us, that has been created for the New York world fair, an exhibit of the developments ahead of us.. The greater and the better world of to-morrow!.. the world of 1960 is spread before you.. in dazzling lights. There is fun and merriment in the world of tomorrow. » - The Wolrd of Tomorrow, NY 1939

From the first images FUTURAMA, the world was re-built: it had separated the city into sections, and we had redesigned counters in future modern lines. we attended the emergence of urban space back, where the ultimate novelty was that of the paths of the fast cars s, which would then change the traffic flow mo-vement into a stream of endless movement, , no traffic jam would interfere: FUTURAMA was a utopian vi-sionary which has stretched the American urbanism the highway force and has rendered mobility possible.

Society becomes a consumer of images, we forget the experience of space. by the car man no longer does this effort of perambulation or he does it only in conditio-ned places . the place has disappeared, and it evolves around a heap object that reassure us, detaching them-selves from what could be a while other than psycho-logical comfort. this is the image that is returned to society, and the image of what we think the company belongs: this is the beginning of the consumer society.

Today, however, the dream seems to be initiated and judgmental voices rising as a precursor with the elite culture against which mass culture is distin-guished by its critical towards the suburbs. followed more recently political, ecological but also a review

of a heightened both architecturally and urban profes-sion. So why the model of the suburbs was it possible? how it was becoming a dominant popular model? why and how is it today criticized, and most importantly, how the American dream has it become negotiable?

In this writing, we will discuss the emergence of the American Look and its promotion, we will try to understand how everything has become subject to consumption, including the architecture we built at the chain, how this model will be promoted through the mass media, and how media and cultural elite will des-cribe the established order, reversing the utopia decor events disorder of the social and psychological aliena-tion., and finally we will focus on the possible conti-nuation of this lifestyle, through the evocation of its urban issues, ecological, political, social and cultural, and therefore questioning the American way of living, trying to capture solutions to remedy in context or the alternative is inevitable critical compliance alienating an unsustainable model and hope for a back to the city.

I. AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE : UTOPIA THAT IS SELLING CARS

«The architecture and the city were often fields of thought and practice very favorable to the expansions of utopias. Across buildings and urban forms we thou-ght to invent better world.» - Serge Wacher

«Shape, proportion, rhythm and variety, the desi-gner leaves its mark on everyday objects in fluid lines and graceful shapes we Americans should love it! ». IDYLLIC. this sentence from an advertisement presen-ted by Chevrolet in 1958, depicts the assumed daily of good American nuclear family. In clothes too well ironed, a family too well groomed, leads a quiet life between barbecue and making cakes. the family is smi-ling , the family is picnicking, in this suburb skyline without the glamour of everyday life seems to make them happy : wealth of design and aesthetics, these Americans who love «the beauty and freedom of indivi-dual choice» seems procures all the paraphernalia said the era of time : here we should sell a car, but at that time the Chevrolet relegated to second plan, because it takes before selling any product, selling comfort and the image it confers . luxury and design in a peaceful city suburbs, constitute sufficient anonymity that each American family identifies with and aspire to. this ob-session with perfection is pushed to its limits by the importance of detail: the door plated gold handle , the light shade, the camera, everything is good to take pro-vided that it is fashionable : it’s the American Look.

Unlike previous decades where the crisis and the Se-cond World War had imposed a restrictive world of life, consumers fifties attend this revolution without prece-dent. The generation born before and during the crisis has reached the age where purchasing power put it in a

position of wealth. This phenomenon, the fact that fewer people are involved, and the extraordinary economic recovery after the war, encourage Americans to spend.Ownership becomes one of the main areas of consump-tion in those years. Away from the city towards the suburbs, then enrolled as a social reality, and 23.6 million Americans become owners of their home, a fi-gure which only grow in the next decade, during which they will be 32.8 million. This migration leads to the construction of endless suburbs such as Levittown, for-mer potato field in 1951 which covers 17,447 homes.

II. SUBURBIAN DYSTOPIA, GET AWAY FROM THE SPRAWL

«Suburban war» is a war declared to the suburbs. In a short film by Spike Jonze, «Scenes from the suburbs» (2011), we follow the lives of adolescents in suburbs around in circles. Without a car, they are fighting their life taking culde-sac. It is far from the ideal american, far from the peaceful life, because we are is worrying about that too much. A view that many filmmakers have already addressed before and we will quote later: Wel-come to the degeneration model Sprawl. The colors of the cars are more flamboyant, and those houses are dull. Nothing happens, human relations are disrupted. While a few decades, the suburbs had a safe place image of the police is omnipresent here and the atmosphere is violent.

By the early 2000s, American television also diverts the image suburbs such as remnants of an era today pretext to renew the genre by the relaxation of an ur-ban model lonely. Such a change of address capaci-ty then queries the media and television arts to take a look innovative, reflective and critical conditions of housing societies. The suburbs are today in terms of a dimension of writers illusion of life, but not the same illusion in the fifties: the love story that kept the Americans with their previously chosen model seems more than ever crumble, exposing the moral ban-kruptcy of a society lost in the glorification of subur-ban normality as fake as illusory. A perfectly tidy en-vironment, that fiction is bothering without complex.

Living in the suburbs equivalent to consistency: same cars, same daily practices, same physical appea-rance, same format, in a rootless and eventless loca-tion. It’s the urban model of the antihero. The media try to call the society on the current tilt of some of its urban bases, of an America in the throes of a cri-sis of civilization that looks more distant from utopia.In Virgin Suicides, first feature fim of Sofia Coppola released in 1999,we found Cecilia Lisbon, one of five sisters Puritan family that the director staged within THE posh bourgeois suburb of Detroit in the 70s. It will make this place part of the moral oppression. What impose the parents to their offspring.they are bad to live in a family home where their only way out seems to be the death is «Stifle», the name given to the party

which is organized in the neighborhood: the spot-less robes mingle with gas masks. In the garden, nobody picnic and girls spew disgust near the pool where ravaged teenagers throw themselves .

The collective suicide of four sisters will be the final set to programmed degeneration of the suburbs: it seems that the American way of life to make more victims than happy ones . According to a study by the Metro-politan Institute of Virginia Tech, there would be 22 million vacant lots in neighborhoods suburbs, which James Howard Kunstler had already predicted in «The Geography of Nowhere» by saying that the suburbs were more an urban model that America could afford.

Then, the financial crisis has revealed in the great day the increasing of american debts throughout the 2000s while their income stagnated, house-holds lived above their means. they built too many houses and too big houses they are now unable to pay. Thus, there are entire neighborhoods emptied of their inhabitants, unable to meet their bills, so-metimes even neighborhoods that will not be built:In an article by Geoff Manaugh «Ghost Town: the abandoned suburb of City Callifornia. the author describes a grid phantom around California City:The dream,will it be literally trying to disappear?

III. THE BLACk-OUT LEVEL : SOLUTIONS FOR THE SPRAWL

The solution to this trend is there-fore to find : the suburbs need renewalfacing the difficulty to renovate these areas so re-mote and vast spread.we hear now debates about the interest to save them , and some planners, as Ri-chard Register or Durhan Ellen Jones-offer-even simply to destroy them , to recreate natural areas and return to a more dense habitat, consisting of smaller units and accessible by public transport.(...)All those ideas are connected on the global intention of human scale : the U.S are building too fast, too big. The emergency is for the country to take time to re-think its economy and its inner functionment : nothing is replacing the oil, and nothing is possible without the cars. For pessimists, suburbs will become the ghettos of tomorrow. For optimists, the suburbs are the opportu-nity to live differently : the fast-foods strips leading to the residentials neighborhoods have to be transformed

in commercial streets, more dense, and habitable. The houses will also have to adapt to the community, work in a common effort to rebuild a sense of sharing. Even the way of feed themselves will be different : the pret-ty gardens will probably become small urban farms.

Exploring the American imagination and its culture, it is first of all to unders-tand the unconscious influence on reality.Beyond the study of architectural and urban archety-pes, my choice was to explore what has underpin-ned the development and the apprehension of the Americans towards the suburbs, which ranged from pair with the idea that they had about themselves.The suburbs are ultimately the tangible result of the hope and pride of the nation that every average Ameri-can family could claim by living his American way of life.This model will follow the race urban eco-nomic triumphed in the fifties, offering a world of all these possible post-war American.The remoteness of the city, the installation of a middle class in the periphery, the suburb becomes a utopia .Only the greatest world power could achieve, «it’s a cartoon of country living, a cartoon of a house.»Today, many Americans have dreamed, and their cultural elite have their well made (ironically) they destroy all that remained to their ideal image.They chose to build walls to symbolize their so-cial status, they built ideas, rather than spaces.we Result of large homogeneous land, hou-ses and cars, as a necessary element, as an es-cape from the dormitory to the pretty storefronts.This is the beginning of decay, and the solutions are being reduced. Cities are too large to be profita-ble. Imaginative solutions are no longer enough to the reality of the economic slowdown and the threat of global warming: it is inevitable to rethink Ameri-can cities , rethink their consumption patterns, their homes and get them out of this imminent suicide.Dismantle the dream, seize its complexity in order to understand the result: the suburbs are a tangle of suc-cessive events and clumsy accident a «money machine».

- Rhita Cadi Soussi.

YOU CAN READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE (IN FRENCH) ON : HTTP://ISSUU.COM/RHITACADISOUSSI/DOCS/SUBURBSSUICIDES

50’S CASABlAnCAA MORROCAn WAY OF lIFe

How do we recognize a city? Often with its architecture and its population, its contrasts and its contradictions, its real image or imagined : sometimes its palm trees. Ca-sablanca, is one of those cities that violates the limits of globality . its heterogeneity which seems to fade behind homogeneous fronts of its big plans, and the lar-ger scale blurs : Casablanca is this reality that puts feet on the ground under the Californian dream. Anfa and California villas, however, form the flam-boyant appearance of a city in constant reconstruc-tion, which keeps its past image as a city of excess.

Identity it is a city whose past reflects the pre-sent, and whose fundamental image is just an im-posture. but before understanding the mage we must seize its fabulous influence .welcome to the fabulous California, where we bask in front of the astonished eyes of the misunderstood mass .

I. THE SHAPE OF DESIRE AND DREAM :

The modern American architecture was first the conse-quence of a fashion and a lifestyle. Within 50 years, it ‘was nice in America, and even more in California.its society is inclined to its effervescence, to novelty,

change of manners, the evolution of taste and impro-vement of technology. The society of consumption by excellence pours then a new worship on itself : the glamor worship (defined by AliceT.Friedman as being a term used both for an object, person, or experience, on condition that it should be a magic). She demons-trates it in «American Glamour and the evolution of modern architecture» as smooth and shiny facades of the architecture of the fifties that reflects a growing passionate by the promises of the Jet Age and a growing fascination for the modern architecture whose half-century American soften the contours of the forefront .

This exacerbated taste of popular culture will be heard by Neutra, Saarinen, Johnson, Lapidus, using their buildings in color, new techniques set stage borrowed from influential circles of fashion and film, and succee-ded in establishing a connection with their audience: men and women are conquered, abandoned by the frustrations of 20 years, they decided to live theatri-cal and superficial. This lifestyle becomes a necessity.

Except newspapers dedicated to professio-nals (Architectural Forum, Progressive Architec-ture, House & Home) it is a type of literature quite

different which will sensitize the general public to architectural themes : American Home, Architectural Digest, Home & Gardens, Good house keeping, La-dies’ home journal, House & garden and Beautiful house played a key role in promoting a vision of mo-dernist life to a non specialized public. They focusedon residential architecture to put the domestic values into evidence and housing data priorities of american society in the post-war period, while ensuring at the same time advertising architects with their audience.California then serves as an example of a lifestyle & architecture and pour its influence in the world throu-gh the media explosion. Casablanca, we also identify that dream devoid of falsely boredom, «on» desi-gnating this handful of privileges that give objective modernity as a way of life under the Moroccan sun.

II. THE MODERNITY, ARCHITECTURE OF PRIVILEGED :

Modernity is undeniable aspect in Casablanca, an expe-rimental laboratory of famous architects and planners, modernity is transmitted by the extensive work, but what is actually the Moroccan vision on modern life and how is it materialized ? resemblance and the persistence of the hill of Anfa with those of California is striking, almost.

As it was called by Monique Eleb and Jean-Louis Cohen. the Period after the 1945 Casablan-ca is qualified by period of the new golden age. This period is marked by the strong diffusion of cultural ideals invading the city and its spirits « it is in the form of an Americanization much ear-lier than metropolis» that reflects in both modes of life in the bourgeois architecture of the house. This process is linked to the landing of Americans on that territory of Casablanca that somehow give life to the idealization of the city by the American ci-nema : Casablanca is held hostage by Hollywood.

It is the city of all the adventures appears to the world of cinema to be adequate for conflicts and intrigues(a reputation that endures because it will be on films such as Syriana Contagien in 2005 and in 2011): Casablanca is responsible for a new meaning to the world., but what about a Casablanca charged with new meaning through the Hollywood screen?- In Picturing Casablanca, Susan Ossman attempts to explain how the city has developed at the same time that the media image. From the beginning of the pro-tectorate, the city grew with spontaneity noisy, an-noying happily plan Lyautey. Cinemas and European light summer outfits are becoming a common sight on the streets of the city. New media invade everyday life while the words and images that surround the social begin to resemble those of Europeans. Casablanca to the taste of freedom, and in the 50s, this freedom is American. And while youth slum it on the coast, their mothers read the last «Housekeeping» (American ma-

gazine specializing in this house at kiosks in the 50s in Morocco) to the pool. it will take some time for Ame-rican cars and amazing villas of modernity to mark a culture where hedonism is equal to exhibitionism.

Architects are also seduced by America: houses Neutra or Schindler correspond to the demands of their cus-tomers, and borrow their modern line. We find the joy of life outside and terraces, loggias, pergolas multiply.

« Casablanca will also have its modern architectural figures: Azagury, Jaubert, Zévaco, Levy Ewerth use all the principles of this architecture, developing a kind of common language: pile ,sunshades, sections of walls playing with the contrast between brick and glass stone walls and bare concrete or plaster, «perfectly recogni-zable recurring element along the streets of the city, the sunshade built in reinforced concrete forming pergola is particularly common, it derives at the same time the projects of le Corbusier , especially for ALGER et Rio and villas in the South California. »- Monique Eleb

III. PRIVATOPIA, ENCLOSING THE BOURGEOISIE OF CASABLANCA :

It is since the 20s that the bourgeoisie and the intelli-gentsia have built a world in which they exercise their power: they were working and living there locked and blinded by an image that refers to this world itself acting as an awareness of the social realities that surround them. The whole forms a tightly closed-residential space on the outside, but significantly hierarchy. In these nei-ghborhoods fortresses, we drive in the car with chauf-feurs for ladies and children, who are driven glass smoke in private schools (including American school of casablanca). Women continue their routes through the artifices that their men built, and go to mall (the newest shopping center in Casablanca Morocco the mall just opened its doors in 2012) Paul Bowles wrote in the 60s that the vast majority the people did not come in the center are now privileged classes who flee. Become dense and popular, breaking their American dream and reminding them that they are in Morocco- Casablanca is a city complex high and low both three million. Though I decided to study one aspect of modernity, is to bring out the biggest contrasts: Casablanca is an urban ghetto, architectural cata-log of all the decades catalog of all social injustices.- how does one t herefore recognize Casablanca ? not by its architecture or population, but by its contrasts and contradictions, by all dreamed ima-ges that become real,by its all duality and its chaos.


YOU CAN READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE (IN FRENCH) ON : HTTP://ISSUU.COM/RHITACADISOUSSI/DOCS/CASABLANCAMORRO-CANWAYOFLIFE

pHOTOgRApHYOF IMMeDIATe CITY FUTURe

«There is a particular pleasure to look at a city that can be so commonplace sight. theTown is a construction of space, and it takes long periods of time to collect.the Ur-ban composition is an art using time.» - Kevin Lynch

I.VAGUE

«The city is hybrid, informs, and since inherited, it is imperfect and contradictory.» -AUC, le Grand Paris

Since the creation of inert human, there is just the city that continues to live without sleep, the lights go on again to the rhythm of those who inhabit it. This is in a sense a living organism suspended from its birth, its composition and congestion. This is a universe in per-petual renewal that reconstructs its strata but the image stays intact. Its movable components are as important as its fixed elements: the inhabited city accumulates excitement, brand architecture, its streets and memo-ries. this is the tangible memory and the existence of the abstraction of human movement. It makes sense if it raises several levels of meaning and combined inter-pretation ,which its main quality is that of vagueness.

II.SENSORIEL

« The city is a mirage. That is why I want it. I desire it. The city is a fantasy. It is mine, it is a forbidden place, it is the dangerous area. »- Valentine Goby, Petit éloge des grandes villes.

The city is the location of the interconnection between geographical issues. Historical, economic, social, po-litical, and architectural articulated human density, but understanding through its sounds, its colors, smel-ls that draw the contours of its identity: it is an in-finite number of images that each one interprets as the only inert ,tangible, poetic and sentimental living under the influence of the seasons, in perpetual oppo-sition between movement and stillness: the city is uni-que because it is only through a symbol it transmits.

II.ZERO

«I traveled a lot and I created an ideal city.» - Augusto Cagnardi.

The negative side of the symbol is related to the impossible perfection. The city is close to ideal as utopia as much as it moves away from the authentic town. Its mixture of im-pressions and moods, there is a limit to the desire to recreate it. (One city nine towns) is a project of the city of Shanghai which wishes ,through a architectural marketing strategy ,to import the European way of life by building postiches cities .this lifestyle passes through the loss of authenti-city in favor of the strong identity of European cities for economic purposes. Reading the city is reduced to zero.


2008 - 2013

portfolio 2008-2013

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palm prints3

palm trees

palm printsnowadays

chinese conquest5

chinese monarchy

chinese population

supervision of denyse

supervision of david