GREAT THEATER IN CASABLANCA - CASARTS

Casablanca Great Theatre is an architectural and cultural icon for the economic capital of Morocco.

Among the several pavilions that constitute this complex, designed by the French architect Christian de Portzamparc, MC2 carried out the Schematic Design and Design Development phases of the two main theatres, for 1800 and 600 people respectively, of a Foyer crossed by slender walkways and of an Access Pavilion with monumental doors.

The Great Theatre consists of a stage, 31.6 m wide and 19.1 m deep, and a multipurpose room for a 1800 people audience, distributed in the lower stalls and in a series of large balconies.

The structure, in reinforced concrete in its entirety, consists of solid slabs, radial bearing walls and a circumferential wall that surrounds most of the scenic stage and the room. What makes the Great Theatre a special structure is the presence of a series of balconies that, arranged like a fan and on two levels around the stalls, and embedded in the radial bearing walls, push out towards the stage.

The structure of the Small Theatre is analogous, except for the presence of a higher grandstand of the amphitheatre that is materialized through a solid slab, stiffened along its edge by means of a structural parapet.

The structures of the other two buildings, the Foyer and the Access Pavilion, are composed mainly of concrete cores and composite slabs in order to minimize structural floor thicknesses. The monumental doors are constituted by two sheets of 10.8×15.3 m, each of which materialized by a plane steel frame that turns around a vertical steel mast supported, at its lower end, by a spherical hinge and braced, at its upper end, with a detail of vertically sliding support.