One of the primary theoretical contributions of settler colonial studies is that settler colonialism is part of a structure that persists despite formal decolonization or national independence. This paper lingers on the role of the built environment as a source of reproduction and architectural preservation as a practice through which this settler colonial structure is maintained by focusing on local architectural preservation practice in Casablanca. Despite the formal independence of Morocco in 1956, this paper argues that architectural preservation practice serves as mode through which to reinforce the structure of settler society. By drawing on semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this paper maps what I refer to as local preservationist moves to avoidance, an adaptation of Tuck and Yang’s “settler moves to avoidance”. By preservationist moves to avoidance, I mean the practices that simultaneously legitimate preservation interventions and remake the histories of settler colonialism by reframing the histories of the built environment as histories of the nation state and modernist architecture. The constitutive role of preservation with the knowledge production of both the nation state and modernist architecture in Casablanca prompts questions on the entanglement of settler colonialism, knowledge production, and the built environment.