Michel Écochard

Écochard began his career at a fairly young age. In 1930, when he was only in his twenties, he began his first public works restoring historic buildings in Damascus, which was then under French colonial rule.[3] He a member of the French reconstruction team that restored the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, the Mosque of Bosra, and the Azm Palace, the last having become a property of the French.[2]

Écochard's first solo project in the colonies was the Museum of Antioch, in which he combined ancient Syrian architectural elements with modernist design. Écochard was a firm believer in the value of historical monuments, an outlook that he maintained while working on the town plan for Damascus. His design for the town ensured protection of its many historical monuments.

He served in the Forces Françaises Libres.[4][5]

In 1943 he worked on the first master plan for Beirut.[2]

He served as the director of the French Protectorate in Morocco's Department of Urban Planning from 1946 to 1952.[1] He changed Casablanca's urban plan from Henri Prost's radio-concentric system—like Paris—to a linear system, with expanded industrial zones stretching east through Aïn Sebaâ toward Fedala.[6][7][8] There was a focus on managing the city's rapid, rural exodus-driven urbanization through the development of social housing projects.[9]

At the 1953 Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), Michel Ecochard presented, along with Georges Candilis, the work of ATBAT-Afrique—the Africa branch of Atelier des Bâtisseurs founded in 1947 by figures including Le Corbusier, Vladimir Bodiansky, and André Wogenscky. It was a study of Casablanca's bidonvilles entitled "Habitat for the Greatest Number."[10][11] It argued against doctrine, arguing that architects must consider local culture and climate in their designs.[12][8][13] This generated great debate among modernist architects around the world and eventually provoked a schism.[12][14][15]

Ecochard's collective of Modernist architects was called Groupe des Architectes Modernes Marocains (GAMMA), and initially included the architects George Candillis, Alexis Josic and Shadrach Woods.[8][16] In the early 1950s, Écochard commissioned GAMMA to design housing that provided a "culturally specific living tissue"[17] for laborers and migrants from the countryside.[18] Sémiramis, Nid d’Abeille (Honeycomb), and Carrières Centrales were some of the first examples of this Vernacular Modernism.[18] This was the first time the French Protectorate built housing for the colonized rather than the colonizers, and it did so to suppress the Moroccan Nationalist Movement, particularly after the 1952 protests following the assassination of the labor unionist Farhat Hached, which were centered in the bidonville of Carrières Centrales (now Hay Mohammadi).[19] The Moroccan GAMMA architect Elie Azagury, with whom he clashed on whether Moroccans could live in high-rises, was critical of Écochard as "an active instrument of the French colonial power."[20] Ecochard's 8x8 meter model, designed to address Casablanca's issues with overpopulation and rural exodus, was pioneering in the architecture of collective housing.[21][1]

In the later 1950s, he returned to Lebanon and created urban plans for Saida (1956-1958) and Byblos (1959-1960).[22] From 1960 to 1964, he conducted various studies of Lebanon.[22] He produced a masterplan for Beirut and its suburbs in 1963/64, recognizing the need to integrate it into a regional and national strategy.[23][22]

Throughout his career, Ecochard also made plans for Pakistan,[22] Sabendé[22] and Fria in Guinea,[24] Martigues, Dakar, Martinique, Damascus, Tabriz, Corsica, Mashhad, Muscat, and Tehran.[22]