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SAMIA HENNI

ARCHITECTURE OF THE CONTROVERSY

 

During the Algerian revolution (1954-1962), the French civil and military authorities reorganized Algeria's vast urban and rural territory, dramatically transforming its built environments, rapidly implementing new infrastructures and strategically building new settlements, in order to maintain Algeria under French rule. The French colonial regime planned and carried out not only programs of tactical destruction but also the construction of new settlements in order to facilitate the strict control of the Algerian population and the protection of European communities in Algeria. This conference examines the policy of three interrelated counterrevolutionary spatial measures: the forced forced resettlement of Algerian farmers; collective housing programs designed for the Algerian population as part of the General Charles de Gaulle Plan of Constantine; and the new fortified administrative town planned for the protection of the French authorities from the terrorist attacks of a French paramilitary group during the last months of the Algerian revolution. The conference describes the modus operandi of these buildings, their origins, intentions, agents, protocols and design mechanisms.