Casablanca Grand Theater

This guide to the Casablanca Grand Theater follows architect Christian de Portzamparc, born in the city in 1944, who beat out Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Rem Koolhaas in a 2009 competition to design a cluster of white pavilions wrapped in a pierced terracotta screen. It tracks the project through repeated missed deadlines and a climbing budget after ground finally broke in 2014, on the square Lyautey and Prost had planned a century before. Stand before that pale, perforated skin and listen for how long it actually took to finish.