How would our definition of modern expand if we no longer thought of the city and the countryside as separate spaces? How would we rewrite the history of modern architecture if city and village were conceived as realms in reciprocal dialogue? 

Michele Tenzon explores these questions in his essay, winner of the 2023 Bruno Zevi Prize, recounting the construction of the village of Haddada in 1950s Morocco and the transformations of a rural community forced to adapt to the changes imposed by the colonial actor.

The Haddada project hovers between the reinterpretation of the bidonville, as described by anthropologists and emerging on the outskirts of industrial cities, and the search for a model of mass residential architecture that addresses the issue of the massive rural exodus. It is an experience that embodies an ambiguous universalism and helps us to understand how late-colonial architecture and planning interpreted the ways in which so-called modernization challenged the established relationships between city and countryside.