Casablanca Twin Towers

This guide to Casablanca's Twin Center follows architect Ricardo Bofill and his Moroccan partner Elie Mouyal, who raised these twin towers in 1998 as a marble-and-steel showcase for luxury retail and a five-star hotel. It traces how the big-name brands that once filled the galleries drifted away, and how a community of Sub-Saharan African women, mostly migrants, turned the emptied boutiques into hair salons and beauty parlors. Look up as you walk the arcades: marble columns raised for designer storefronts now frame rows of hairdressers' chairs.