MAKAN Journal of Culture & Space is a trilingual print journal critically engaging with contemporary architecture, urban conditions, and cultural scholarship from and about the SWANA region. Edited and published by Think Tanger, a non-profit arts organization based in Tangier, Morocco, MAKAN brings together diverse authorial approaches, visual practices, and geo-cultural perspectives. With contributions in English, Arabic, and French, the journal aims to foster dialogue across languages, disciplines, and territories.
Contributors
About
Makan #1 | Informal Utopias
Makan #2 | Manufacturing Naratives
Makan #3 | Synthetic Agencies
Contibutors
MAKAN #1 / Informal Utopias (2020)
Conceived within [and in response to] the global pandemic, Informal Utopias inaugurates the Makan journal by reimagining the entanglement of practice and possibility. Rather than pursuing idealized or prescriptive visions, this issue explores the spaces that have eluded the dominant logics and trajectories of utopian thought. Drawing primarily from the work of residents and contributors involved in Think Tanger’s pre-pandemic program cycle, the issue constructs a decentered grammar of utopianism grounded in the everyday urban fabric of Tangier. Through essays, observations, and spatial narratives, it examines how informal practices might reshape understandings of collective well-being, urban resilience, and social imagination. Edited by William Kutz, Informal Utopias laid the foundation for Makan as a platform for critical inquiry into contemporary architectural and urban conditions, rooted in plurality and informed by scholarship from Africa and the Arabic-speaking world.
Design & Visuals By Anna Benarrosh
About
Makan #1 | Informal Utopias
Makan #2 | Manufacturing Naratives
Makan #3 | Synthetic Agencies
Contibutors
MAKAN #2 / Manufacturing Narratives (2023)
In its second issue, Manufacturing Narratives, Makan focuses on how interrogating narrativity can provoke fundamental questions about how societies define or choose to accept societal or historical truths in today’s world. Spanning across [and beyond] the Mashreq and Maghreb, the various contributions reflect a shared space of inquiry that bridges geographies and fosters emergent dialogues across shifting territorialities. This issue invited contributors to right (as much as write) narratives: to question authorship and its social collectivities, to retell alternative public histories, to explore gender roles, and to unsettle the exoticism, folklorization, and political textures of fiction as a practice of indiscipline. Together, these contributions re-articulate the genealogies of our present through the pluralities of the past, offering tools to imagine and manufacture alternative futures, and realities otherwise.
Design By Anna Benarrosh Visuals By Kamal Daghmoumi
About
Makan #1 | Informal Utopias
Makan #2 | Manufacturing Naratives
Makan #3 | Synthetic Agencies
Contibutors
MAKAN #3 / Synthetic Agencies (2025)
Building on the foundations of the first two issues, Synthetic Agencies invites a rethinking [and unthinking] of the assumptions, polarities, and discontents surrounding the notion of agency. Traditionally defined in Western thought as the capacity to act and effect change, agency is inseparable from questions of power and the often invisible structures through which power operates. The various contributions interrogate how agency is produced, constrained, or distributed through the systems of knowledge, design, and governance that shape our built environments, technologies, media, and cultures. They were are invited to right (as much as write on) agency, reflecting on how it operates across different scales and contexts, and imagining alternative worlds or configurations. Ultimately, Synthetic Agencies understands agency not as a fixed attribute but as a contested lens through which we might read, reshape, or resist the conditions of the present.
Design By Anna Benarrosh Visuals By Kamal Daghmoumi & Hamza Essabbani
About
Makan #1 | Informal Utopias
Makan #2 | Manufacturing Naratives
Makan #3 | Synthetic Agencies
Contibutors
Contributors
MAKAN #1 / Informal Utopias (2020)
- William Kutz (Editor)
- MF Kalfat
- Eugénie Denarnaud
- Hicham Gardaf
- Charlotte Malterre-Barthes
- Yolande Benarrosh
- Salima Ben Moussa
- Omar Nagati
- Soraya El Kahlaoui
- Abderrahim Benattabou
- Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou
- Aliocha Tazi
- Anna Benarrosh-Orsoni
- Kevin Witkow
Publication Director
Hicham Bouzid
Editor-in-chief
Ali T As’ad
Assistant Editor
Salma Barmani
Artistic Direction & Graphic Design
Anna Benarrosh
Edited and published by
Think Tanger
Contributors
MAKAN #2 / Manufacturing Narratives (2023)
- Ala Younis
- Bari Abbassi
- George Bajalia
- Karim Kattan
- Karima Kadaoui
- Tamkeen
- Kenza Sefrioui
- Lahbib El Moumi
- Laila Hida
- Maureen Mougin
- Mohamed Amer Meziane
- Monica Basbous
- Nadia Tazi
- Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou
- Salma Barmani
- Sonia Terrab
- Soufiane Hennani
- Yto Barrada
Contributors
MAKAN #3 / Synthetic Agencies (2025)
- Amine Houari
- Driss Ksikes
- Fehras Publishing Practices
- Hamed Sinno
- Helga Tawil-Souri
- Lada Hršak
- Mayada Madbouly
- Myriam Ababsa
- Nzinga Biegueng Mboup
- Ola Hassanain
- Omer Shah
- OPPA
- Salma Barmani
- Samia Henni
- Tarek El-Ariss
- Zaidoun Hajjar