• 1 Lotus International, no. 25, 1980 (Hybrid Architecture). The two contributions featuring Morocco ar (...)
• 2 See the references in the introduction to the Dossier of this ABE Journal issue by the guest editor (...)

1Everyone even vaguely knowledgeable about the historiography of colonial architecture will be familiar with some of the scholarship on French Morocco. Indeed, together with research on British India, the investigation of the built environment produced by (mainly) French architects and planners during the Protectorate of Morocco emerged already in the pioneering years of this particular field of inquiry in architectural history. A telling example is the remarkable theme issue on “Hybrid Architecture” of the Italian journal Lotus International which was published as early as 1980, and, apart from an introduction by Jacques Gubler entitled Architecture and Colonialism. A Historiographical Safari, contained two contributions featuring Morocco, next to articles on colonial India, Indonesia as well as Istanbul, Minorca and Manchuria.1 Since then, the scholarship on this topic has augmented significantly, with seminal work being done by Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb (1998), as well as important critical studies coming out of the anglophone milieu, in particular those of Paul Rabinow (1989), Gwendolyn Wright (1991) and, later, Tom Avermaete (2010, 2014, 2022).2 With a strong focus on, on the one hand, the decades of the 1910s-20s when architect and planner Henri Prost worked under Maréchal Lyautey to reshape the urban form and cityspace of, among others, Rabat and Casablanca, and, on the other, on the Écochard years in 1950s Casablanca, this scholarship triggered the by now widely, albeit often uncritically, accepted notion that the colonies acted as “laboratory” for modern architecture and urban planning.

• 3 Jean Dethier, “60 ans d’urbanisme au Maroc: l’évolution des idées et des réalisations,” Bulletin éc (...)
• 4 Nezar Alsayyad, Forms of Dominance. On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise, Al (...)
• 5 Most notably ABE Journal, no. 4, 2013 (Johan Lagae and Kim De Raedt (eds.), Global Experts ‘Off Rad (...)

2In their introduction, the guest editors of this theme issue rightly nuance this idea, and present an in-depth historiographic overview, bringing to the fore less well-known studies (such as that of Jean Dethier dating from as far back as 1970)3 that will surely be of interest to an anglophone audience. By presenting contributions that delve deep into the complex institutional settings which underpinned the production of the built environment in both colonial and postcolonial Morocco, this theme issue also challenges the conviction that, as Nezar Alsayyad famously wrote in 1992, “colonial cities are important to understand, […] because the politics of decisions in them are more transparent.”4 But most importantly, the guest-editors make a timely and much needed plea to extend the scope of research to an “au-delà du colonial” and thus towards the “temps long de l’indépendance,” presenting stimulating new scholarship on post-1956 developments, actors and projects, not only via a carefully curated selection of cases in the theme section, but also by providing content for the PhD, Debate and Sources sections that tie in directly with the main theme. The introduction as well as several of the contributions included in the themed section engage with the concept of “Moroccanization,” raising issues of professionalization, training, dependencies and identity that are also fundamental for studying the architectural history in other contexts. As such, the research compiled in this theme section provides a substantial contribution to the growing historiography on post-independence architecture and urbanism, an important line of inquiry to which ABE Journal has contributed with previous issues.5

• 6 The question of colonial heritage was also the topic of an early issue of ABE Journal, see ABE Jour (...)
• 7 URL: https://rham.hypotheses.org/. Accessed 25 April 2025.

3Interestingly, the contributors to this issue underline the crucial importance of drawing on local archives, local voices, and alternative sources, thereby also articulating explicitly the challenges in trying to locate and access these, something which will be familiar to those scholars engaging in similar research elsewhere. This is also picked up in the Debate section, in which one of the guest editors extends the discussion to the notion of heritage,6 and the ambivalences regarding policies and practices related to the safeguarding of 20th-century architecture in Morocco, especially that of the postwar period and immediate post-independence years, an architectural production which has triggered an interest of a younger generation of local researchers and architects since about two decades. As members (and co-founders) of RHAM (Réseau de recherche sur l'histoire de l'architecture au Maroc aux XX^e-XXI^e siècles),7 the guest editors are deeply embedded in such local networks.

• 8 Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, (...)
• 9 In a footnote to one of the chapters in her book entitled “The Caste City,” Janet Abu-Lughod explic (...)
• 10 This debate was at the center of a recent international conference in Paris entitled Faire l'histoi (...)

4By providing a platform for research produced mainly by a generation of young, and often, locally based researchers, some of which only just finished their PhD while others are in the stage of finalizing it, this theme issue of ABE Journal engages with claims for rewriting the history of architectural production “beyond Europe,” not only by focusing on more recent historical periods, but also doing so from alternative perspectives and positions that matter to those working or having worked outside of the “center.” In this respect, it is interesting to note that in several of the contributions in this theme issue, explicit reference is made to Janet Abu-Lughod’s seminal 1980 book Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco,8 with an—often clear—sense of approval, while around the time of its publication, Maghrebi scholars often still contested the use of the term “apartheid.”9 It is a further indication that also in the francophone scholarly milieu of architectural historians, discussions are becoming framed through a decolonial lens, even if the debate remains open regarding the extent to which this perspective should replace the earlier, postcolonial rereading of architectural history introduced in the 1990s by scholars like Zeynep Çelik and others.10

• 11 The consequences of this language dominance were addressed in a session entitled “English as the Ac (...)

5This issue, finally, ties in with one of the foundational editorial policies of ABE Journal. From the very beginning, the journal was indeed mounted as an instrument to provide a platform for scholars working—even partially—outside of the confines of anglophone scholarship and bringing such often overlooked research to a global readership. For ABE Journal, it remains essential that scholarship in other languages becomes part of the debate in the “center” where English still is the lingua franca.11 Hence the deliberate choice to publish this theme section (partly) in French, and providing abstracts in an additional language for the journal, namely Arabic, to make the work also more widely accessible to those communities working outside of the anglophone sphere.