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In 1912, the artist Matisse visited Morocco. His encounter with the country’s rich strong colours, the exotic architecture and the landscape – both lush and dry – changed his art forever. Morocco’s cityscapes, atmosphere and society attracted many more artists, including actors, writers and poets, throughout the twentieth century. The architectural styles, majestic residences and traditional interior design of Morocco still inspire today, attracting luminaries and celebrities of the day. In particular, the Moroccan traditional house, designed around an interior courtyard, is fuelling a stylish new mood and look in home architecture and design.

History and Styles (Part 1) Moroccan architecture is an eclectic, even cosmopolitan cultural blend that reflects its long and rich history. Morocco’s indigenous people are the Berbers, who farmed the land from at least 2000 BC. Subsequent rulers and invaders included Arabians, the Spanish, the Portuguese and, in recent, colonial times, French occupiers. (Morocco was declared a French protectorate in 1912, the same year as Matisse’s visit.)

In the Moroccan cities, the medina, or old city, sits alongside the boulevards of the adjacent French-style towns, built by the colonisers as part of development efforts in the earlier twentieth century. The oldest architecture in Morocco includes ancient fortified citadels (kasbahs) and villages (ksars), mostly located in and around the Atlas Mountains. These are of a style dubbed ‘Southern Kasbah’. Made of sun-dried brick, these towering forts, many later turned into palaces, boast simple lines. Despite their massiveness, they still seem to blend seamlessly with their environments. Though many are now ruined, some have found new life as film sets for Hollywood movies. The romance of the kasbah was immortalised in the famous 1942 film set in Morocco’s largest city: Casablanca.

Moroccan Islamic architecture, incorporating elements of African traditional buildings and materials, arose after Islam spread across North Africa in the later 7th century AD. The dominant Moroccan architectural style, Hispano-Moorish, dates to around the eleventh century AD, when the indigenous Berber peoples, who had adopted Islam after the Arab conquest, came to power. Berber dynasties would rule Morocco and large parts of Spain for the next four centuries. The Hispano-Moorish architectural style originated in Spain (in Andalusia), and was taken across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco at the behest of the ruling Berber Almoravid dynasty. The Almoravids sent Spanish artisans to Morocco, where they introduced the graceful arches and lofty domes that, along with white walls and green stucco roofs, have become hallmarks of the Hispano-Moorish style. From the 11th to 15th centuries, Moroccan art and architecture enjoyed a golden age, flourishing under successive Berber dynasties. Initially, buildings tended to sport simple, plain exteriors but were lavishly decorated inside with geometric designs, floral patterns and the like. By the fifteenth century, the style had evolved to include ornately embellished exteriors, on mosques, medersas (religious schools) and other public architecture.

That these elaborate patterns were perfected as a high art form owes something to Islam’s prohibition of figural imagery, especially humans and animals, in religious art. (Such figures were not, however, forbidden in the home, as is often thought. Figurative images adorned items such as carpets, for example). Morocco’s splendid mosques with their soaring minarets from where the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer, the medina’s ancient streets, the ornamented palaces, and the warrens of the kasbahs still enchant visitors. It is, however, the design and style of the traditional Moroccan house, or riad, that has especially captured the twenty-first century imagination.

See Also:

Moroccan Architecture: Part 2

Moroccan Architecture: Part 3