Safi – In the years following independence in 1956, Morocco embraced Brutalism as the architectural language of a new nation. 

Concrete became a symbol of progress, shaping everything from public buildings and spas to housing estates with bold, unadorned forms that reflected the optimism of a country building its future.

When concrete meant the future

No city tells that story better than Agadir. After a devastating earthquake leveled the city in 1960, Morocco chose not to walk away. 

Instead, it rebuilt Agadir from the ground up, turning it into one of the country’s defining showcases of postwar Brutalist architecture.

Over the following decade, a new Agadir emerged in clean geometric lines and exposed concrete. Architects dubbed the aesthetic the Agadir Style, a distinctly Moroccan interpretation of Brutalism.

Jean-François Zevaco, Elie Azagury, and Mourad Ben Embarek drew much of it, and Casablanca-born Jean-François Zevaco would become the defining architect of the era.

The movement spread beyond Agadir. In Rabat, the architects of the Rabat School reimagined public architecture in concrete, creating a modern civic language that still shapes the capital today.

Casablanca gained heavy public buildings and new housing estates for a fast-growing population. 

This was Brutalism as a statement of independence, marking a deliberate break from the colonial architecture that had defined the city before.

Time was not kind to Brutalism. 

Concrete darkened under the elements, neglect took its toll, and changing tastes pushed the style out of favor. 

By the 1990s, many of Morocco’s Brutalist landmarks had become eyesores in the public imagination. Some disappeared altogether; others quietly crumbled.

A spa that slowly went quiet

Just outside Fez, the Sidi Harazem thermal baths remain one of the finest surviving examples of Moroccan Brutalism. 

Designed by Jean-François Zevaco in the early 1960s, the complex frames mineral springs that have drawn bathers for centuries within striking concrete forms.

Low-slung canopies and stepped terraces create shade as part of the architecture itself, offering relief from the valley’s intense heat. 

For decades, families from across the region gathered here, making Sidi Harazem as much a social meeting place as a thermal spa.

Then it faded. Pools and pavilions closed one by one, the concrete stained and cracked, and a place that once felt like the future became a ruin people remembered fondly and visited less. 

Ask an older Moroccan about Sidi Harazem and you often get a memory, not a plan to return.

Bringing it back to life

A restoration backed by the Getty Foundation’s “Keeping It Modern” program is now underway, with a reopening targeted around 2029, aiming to revive not just the concrete but the reason people came: the water, the shade, and the sense of a shared place.

Others are saving the rest before it disappears. MAMMA, a preservation group founded in 2016 by architects Imad Dahmani and Lahbib El Moumni, has been documenting Morocco’s modern architectural heritage, mapping overlooked buildings and bringing their stories back into public view. 

Its Modern Casablanca Map alone has helped place dozens of forgotten landmarks back on the architectural record.

For a country that spent decades turning away from its Brutalist past, that renewed attention marks a significant shift. 

The architecture once dismissed as outdated is finally being recognized as part of Morocco’s modern heritage.

The concrete that a generation learned to look past is what the world now travels to find. It was only waiting.