The force of life pulsates through Marrakech’s narrow streets and alleyways; donkeys, waspish motorbikes and hundreds of djellaba-clad Moroccans jostle for space.

Inevitably there is no hint of this at Marrekech airport where air travellers are fed into the grand concourse of Terminal 1, its clear span articulated by huge sculptural white rhomboids on roof and facade, the deep canopy and the photovoltaics on the roof shading passengers from the Moroccan sun. Completed last year, the building by French practice CR Architects demonstrates the persistence of colonial ties. The steel and concrete projects a strong image that somehow suggests the complexity of geometric Islamic patterns without any use of the skills that traditionally defined them.

Penetrating the intensely dense streets of Marrakech’s old Medina you can see these patterns at a smaller scale cut into metal for lamps, carved into wood for screens and doors and tooled into leather for bags for the tourists. Craft skills are still very visibly alive and being harnessed for new developments such as the rather fine pise (rammed earth) that is being used to give a soupcon of Moroccan identity to the luxury hotel Jardin D’Ines, just north of the city walls.

Opposite is Marrakech’s new Cyber Park, where computer terminals sit alongside sunken beds of bougainvillea. The international language of the airport terminal is perhaps only matched by that of the web. The steel and concrete of the airport is replaced by another modern cliché of timber-clad pavilions with white roof profiles. But, unlike in the strictly regulated airport, people and vegetation are taking over this ordered, modern space and making it part of the city. The computers lie almost unused. Instead there are young Moroccans drumming and head-scarved women watching fountains playing under palms while pomegranates await the chance to break into leaf with last years withered fruit still on the branch.