This article examines the emergence of “holiday villages” along the Tetouan coastline in northern Morocco between 1965 and 1970, in the context of tourism development policies promoted by the Moroccan state after independence. Although brief, this period marked an intense phase of projects that reshaped the identy of the northern Moroccan coast and offered an alternative to traditional hotels. Drawing on a cross-referenced corpus of institutional archives, project files, promotional brochures, and interviews, the study analyses the joint involvement of public and private actors—including Moroccan and foreign architects, investors, and institutions—and highlights the performative role of tourist architecture in shaping a coastal imaginary that combined modernity with vernacular references.

Morocco’s postwar urban planning history is closely tied to the “Service de l’urbanisme” (SU), established in 1947 by the French Protectorate and initially led by the French architect and urban planner Michel Écochard. This paper shifts the focus from Écochard’s overlighted contributions to the SU as an institution, examining its role from its foundation during the Protectorate to its evolution through and beyond Écochard’s tenure and after Morocco’s independence, as a tool for empowerment and a testing ground for innovative housing projects and a first generation of local architects and experts. Drawing on unpublished local sources from Morocco and private collections (correspondence, textes juridiques, archival drawings), as well as interviews with key figures from the SU’s post-independence period, this paper analyzes correspondence, legislation, and archival drawings to shed light on major urban planning projects, housing initiatives, and official publications. These materials are critically examined in relation to the agency’s evolving role, from a colonial instrument of pacification to a tool of emancipation in the state’s nation-building project.

From 1967 to 1972, the Centre d’expérimentation, de recherche et de formation (CERF) functioned as a multidisciplinary research and advisory body (made up of engineers, architects, geographers, economists, jurists, and sociologists) for the housing and urban planning department of the Moroccan Ministry of Interior. Led by the influential French ingénieur des Ponts et Chaussées Alain Masson, and staffed primarily by French and Belgian professionals, CERF operated as a hub for various forms of international expertise in Morocco, made possible through multilateral and bilateral cooperation agreements.This article outlines the overall history of CERF, examining its organizational structure, main objectives, and operational agendas. It first considers this research center as a key site for rethinking the little-studied legacy of the “cooperation years” in architectural history. It then highlights how CERF functioned as a space where low-cost housing strategies—aimed at addressing what were perceived as the specific challenges of the so-called “Third World”—were actively explored through vernacular-inspired “soft” architecture and incremental (or “slow”) development approaches. By doing so, it argues that CERF represents a remarkable example of a post-independence contact zone, where both collaboration and tension emerged among foreign technical experts, emerging Moroccan architects, and local government officials, and where different conceptions of low-cost architecture were formulated and contested.

International audience