Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T04:41:19.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Architectural History and the Colonial Question: Casablanca, Algiers and Beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Extract

The last decade has seen an explosion of scholarly works dealing with colonial architecture and town planning, a domain previously marginal in the historiography. In any case it has aroused the attention of ever more numerous researchers, a fact that has stimulated this attempt to take stock of it, by drawing on cases studied by this author in his own work. The exploration of colonialism now constitutes a significant field of doctoral research, of studies associated with the identification and protection of built heritage, and tends to mould new images in the history of architecture from the last few centuries. In actual fact, the innumerable works on the twentieth century – the subject here – comprise only a fraction of all the studies concerning nearly five centuries of colonization, if the beginning of the colonial era is identified with the discovery of America and the establishment of the first European trading posts in Africa.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 The situation around ten years ago can be studied by reading the special issue of Design Book Review, 29–30 (Summer-Fall 1993).

2 Crinson, Mark, Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture (London, 1996).Google Scholar

4 King, Anthony, The Bungalow: the Production of a Global Culture (London, 1984).Google Scholar

Rabinow, Paul, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge, Mass., 1989)Google Scholar; Wright, Gwendolyn, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago, 1991)Google Scholar; Vacher, Hélène, Projection coloniale et ville rationalisée: le rôle de l’espace colonial dans la constitution de l’urbanisme en France, 1900–1931 (Aalborg, 1997).Google Scholar

5 Mia Fuller, ‘Colonizing Constructions: Italian Architecture, Urban Planning and the Creation of Modern Society in the Colonies, 1869–1943’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of California, 1994), in press under the title Moderns Abroad: Italian Colonial Architecture and Urbanism (London, 2007); Cresti, Federico, ‘Oasi di italiani’. La Libia della colonizzazione agraria tra fascismo, guerra e indipendenza (1935-1956) (Torino, 1996).Google Scholar

6 Cohen, Jean-Louis and Eleb, Monique, Casablanca, Colonial Myths and Architectural Ventures (New York, 2002)Google Scholar; Cohen, Jean-Louis, Kanoun, Youcef and Oulebsir, Nabila eds, Alger, paysage urbain et architecture 1800–2000 (Paris, 2003).Google Scholar

7 Denison, Edward, Ren, Guang Yu and Gebremedhin, Naizgy, Asmara, Africa’s Secret Modernist City (London, 2003).Google Scholar

8 Pinol, Jean-Luc, Histoire de l’Europe urbaine (Paris, 2003).Google Scholar

9 Cody, Jeffrey, Exporting American Architecture, 1870–2000 (London, 2003).Google Scholar

10 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978) and Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993).

11 Émile-Bayard, Jean, L’Art de reconnaître les styles coloniaux de la Prance (Paris, 1931).Google Scholar

12 Morton, Patricia, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris (Cambridge, 2000).Google Scholar

13 Avermaete, Tom, Another Modern: the Post-War Architecture and Urbanism of Candilis-Josic-Woods (Rotterdam, 2005), pp. 13439.Google Scholar

14 Strauven, Francis, Aldo van Eyck: the Shape of Relativity (Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 14349 and 38091.Google Scholar

15 Ravereau, André, Le M’Zab, une leçon d’architecture (Paris, 1981).Google Scholar

16 Béguin, François, with Baudez, Gildas, Lesage, Denis and Godin, Lucien, Arabisances, décors architectural et tracés urbains en Afrique du Nord 1830–1950 (Paris, 1983).Google Scholar

17 Culot, Maurice and Thiveaud, Jean-Marie eds, Architectures françaises outre-mer (Paris and Liege, 1992).Google Scholar

18 Kanoun, Youcef et al. eds, Alger, lumières sur la ville (Algiers, 2002).Google Scholar

19 The French word used here, dépaysement, also conveys a sense of being transferred to a foreign country.

20 Robin, Christelle ed., La ville européenne exportée (Paris, 1995)Google Scholar; Nasr, Joe and Volait, Mercedes (eds), Urbanism: Imported or Exported? Native Aspirations and Foreign Plans (Chichester, England, 2003).Google Scholar

21 King, Anthony, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power, and Environment (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Urbanism, Colonialism and the World Economy (London, 1990).

22 Ricoeur, Paul, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Cohen and Eleb, Casablanca; Cohen, Kanoun and Oulebsir eds, Alger.

24 Foucault, Michel, ‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics, 16.1 (Spring 1986), pp. 2227 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (The original lecture was given by Foucault in 1967.)

25 Gramsci, Antonio, Note su Macchiavelli: sulla politica e sullo stato moderno (Torino, 1949).Google Scholar

26 On this point, see Hélène Vacher, Projection coloniale et ville rationalisée, pp. 213–57.

27 Eleb, Monique, ‘An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism: Ecochard, Candilis and ATBAT-Afrique’, in Anxious Modernisms, Experimentations in Postwar Architectural Culture, eds Goldhagen, Sarah Williams and Legault, Réjean (Cambridge, Mass., and Montreal, 2000), pp. 5573.Google Scholar

28 On heritage policy and the signifance of Claro’s house, see Oulebsir, Nabila, Les usages du patrimoine: monuments, musées et politique coloniale en Algérie (1830-1930) (Paris, 2004), pp. 26192.Google Scholar

29 See Rivet, Daniel, Lyautey et l’institution du Protectorat français au Maroc 1912–1925, 3 (Paris, 1988).Google Scholar

30 Fuller, ‘Colonizing Constructions’, pp. 321–35.

31 Culot, Maurice, Legault, Réjean, Peyceré, David and Ragot, Gilles eds, Les Frères Perret; l’œuvre complète (Paris, 2000), pp. 10607.Google Scholar

32 ‘Alger ville-neuve’, special issue of Acier, 7 (1935).

33 Culot, Legault, Peyceré and Ragot eds, Les Frères Perret, pp. 342–43.

34 ‘Les Travaux de construction de l’Hôtel-de-ville d’Alger’, Construire, 11.10 (October 1938), pp. 435–38.

35 On the 1925 Exposition, see Yvonne Brunhammer, 1925 (Paris, 1976).

36 Christian Otto, Richard Pommer, Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture (Chicago, 1991), p. 51 and ill. 85.

37 On the reception of this scheme, see Boudon, Philippe, Lived-in Architecture: Le Corbusier’s Pessac Revisited (Cambridge, Mass., 1972).Google Scholar

38 Pauly, Daniele, Ronchamp lecture d’une architecture (Strasburg, 1987), p. 133.Google Scholar

39 Maria Argenti, ‘Adalberto Libera, l’insula INA-Casa al Tuscolano’, Architetture nell’Italia della Ricostruzione, Rassegna di Architettura e urbanistica, 39.117 (2005), pp. 86–97.

40 Drawing no. 29051, Fondation Le Corbusier Archives, Paris, reproduced in Brooks, Allen H. (ed.), The Le Corbusier Archive, 25 (New York/Paris, 1984), p. 47.Google Scholar

41 King, Colonial Urban Development, pp. 22–34.

42 Levi-Strauss, Claude, Race et Histoire (Paris, 1987), p. 38.Google Scholar