On the edge: the internal frontiers of architecture in Algiers/Marseille
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13602365.2011.636999
ISSN1466-4410
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Architectural Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements I am grateful to the editors for having invited me to participate in this special issue, to the anonymous reviewers for their generous comments and to Jordan Sand for his incisive response to an earlier version of this essay. As always, it is to Sarah Betzer that I owe my deepest gratitude for having pushed me to think anew about familiar terrain. Notes Marseille was repeatedly cast in literary accounts as exotic territory: see L. Bertrand, L'invasion: Roman contemporain (Paris, Nelson, 1911); A. Londres, Marseille: Porte du Sud (Paris, Editions de France, 1927); C. McKay, Banjo: A Story without a Plot (New York, Harper, 1929); A. Suarès, Marsiho (Paris, Trémois, 1931). This phenomenon and its effects on urban planning are explored at greater length in S. Crane, Mediterranean Crossroads: Marseille and Modern Architecture (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2011). In 1848 Algeria was officially divided into three French départements and after 1871 it was redefined as an integral part of the French Republic. É. Balibar, 'Algeria, France: One Nation or Two?', in, J. Copjec, M. Sorkin, eds, Giving Ground: The Politics of Propinquity (London, Verso, 1999), p. 168. Ibid, p. 162. Ibid, p. 170. Ibid, p. 164. Although the literature on architecture and planning under French colonialism is too vast to cite here, key studies on Algiers include Z. Çelik Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997); S. Almi, Urbanisme et colonisation: Présence française en Algérie (Sprimont, Mardaga, 2002); Z. Çelik, Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830–1914 (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2008); J.-L. Cohen, N. Oulebsir, Y. Kanoun, eds, Alger: Paysage urbain et architectures, 1800–2000 (Paris, Éditions de l'Imprimeur, 2003). The effects of colonialism on French cities are traced in P. Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2000); P. Silverstein, Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2004); J. Boittin, Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2010). Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2006). For further discussion of these dynamics, see S. Crane, 'Mediterranean Dialogues: Le Corbusier, Pouillon, and Simounet', in, J.-F. Lejeune, M. Sabatini, eds, Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean (London, Routledge, 2009), pp. 95–109. For the historical geography of Algiers, see R. Lespès, Alger: Étude de géographie et d'histoire urbaines (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1930), pp. 40–45. See H. Klein, Le Vieil Alger et sa banlieue (Algiers, Fontana Frères, 1912); L. Golvin, Palais et demeures d'Alger à la période ottomane (Aix-en-Provence, Édisud, 1988); S. Missoum, Alger à l'époque ottomane (Aix-en-Provence, Édisud, 2003), pp. 19–28. See M. Péraldi, 'Fragments d'urbanité dans une ville éparse, in Marseille, ou Le présent incertain (La Tour-d'Aigues, Pierre-Baptiste, 1985), pp. 110–12; M. Roncayolo, L'Imaginaire de Marseille (Marseille, Éditions CCIMP, 1990), pp. 37–38. In 1951, local authorities calculated that 5,000 dwelling units were needed per year for fifteen years to satisfy current housing demands; by 1960, the estimate had increased to 12,000 per year. A. Sayad, J.-J. Jordi, É. Témime, Migrance: Histoire des migrations à Marseille, vol. 4 (Aix-en-Provence, Edisud, 1991), p. 133. The city's population grew from 214,520 in 1931 to 357,753 in 1954, a seventy-five percent increase. J. Pelletier, Alger, 1955 (Paris, Belles Lettres, 1959), pp. 6–7. Zeynep Çelik has examined Chevallier's building campaign in Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations, op. cit., pp. 143–79. Louis Miquel worked in Le Corbusier's Parisian studio in the early 1930s. Although Aéro-Habitat was initially to have housed employees of an airline manufacturing facility, it was ultimately transformed into a more typical HLM project intended for private and municipal functionaries. N. Chabbi-Chemrouk, 'Jardins et parcs publics d'Alger aujourd'hui', in, J.-L. Cohen, et. al., eds, Alger, op. cit., p. 302. J.-L. Cohen, 'Le Corbusier, Perret et les figures d'un Alger modern', in, J.-L. Cohen, et. al., eds, Alger, op. cit., p. 184; J. Sbriglio, L'Unité d'habitation de Marseille (Marseille, Editions Parenthèses, 1992), p. 22. Z. Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations, op. cit., p. 161. R. Simounet, 'La leçon d'Alger', La Ville, no. 1 (1995), reprinted in R. Klein, Roland Simounet: Dialogues sur l'invention (Paris, Éditions du Moniteur, 2005), p. 155. M. Roncayolo, Imaginaire de Marseille, op. cit., p. 186. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the Author. See T. Durousseau, 'Ensembles et Résidences à Marseille, 1955–1975′ (Aix-en-Provence, DRAC-PACA, 2008), http://www.paca.culture.gouv.fr/dossiers/xxeme_marseille/present.htm. J. Pelletier, 'Un aspect de l'habitat à Alger: les bidonvilles', Revue de Géographie de Lyon, 30, no. 3 (1955), p. 280. 'Aéro-Habitat', Techniques et Architecture, 10: 5–6 (May, 1951), p. 75. In 1954, thirty percent of Algeria's autochthonous population lived in the bidonville: R. Descloitres, J.-C. Reverdy, C. Descloitres, L'Algérie des bidonvilles (Paris, Mouton & Co., 1961), p. 31. See also J. Pelletier, 'Un aspect de l'habitat à Alger', op. cit.; Z. Çelik, 'Bidonvilles, CIAM et grands ensembles', in J.-L. Cohen, et. al., eds, Alger, op. cit. For Marseille, see J. Greber, Ville de Marseille: Plan d'aménagement et d'extension (Paris, Vincent & Fréal, 1933); Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Fi 2753, E. Beaudouin, 'Plan d'aménagement de la Ville de Marseille', 1941/42. La Mahieddine housed grocery shops, restaurants, numerous artisans, a mosque and a school. J. Pelletier, 'Un aspect de l'habitat à Alger', op. cit., pp. 280, 285; J. Pelletier, Alger, 1955, op. cit., pp. 71–72. On the CIAM grid's organisational logic, see R. Klein, 'L'expérience du bidonville: Roland Simounet et le groupe CIAM-Alger', in J.-L. Bonillo, C. Massu, D. Pinson, eds, La Modernité critique: Autour du CIAM 9 d'Aix-en-Provence — 1953 (Marseille, Éditions Imbernon, 2006), pp. 207–8. Z. Çelik, 'Learning from the Bidonville: CIAM Looks at Algiers', Harvard Design Magazine, no. 18 (2003), pp. 71–74. See also Z. Çelik, 'Bidonvilles, CIAM et grands ensembles', op. cit., pp. 189–205. R. Klein, 'L'expérience du bidonville', op. cit., pp. 208–12. The foundational account of these dynamics is Homi K. Bhabha, 'Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse', in The Location of Culture (London, Routledge, 1994), pp. 85–92. The CIAM-Alger study featured many views of everyday objects, including a photograph of a worn enamel pitcher on a coal brazier and a drawing by Simounet featuring a pot of basil, coffee grinder, gas brazier and kanoun. Z. Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations, op. cit., p. 165. Vaulted roofs were ubiquitous forms in the Nador-Scala bidonville and others in the city: R. Descloitres, et al., L'Algérie des bidonvilles, op. cit. By 1976, Logirem had constructed more than 12,000 dwelling units in Marseille, twenty-four percent designated for immigrant families from North Africa. M. Bernardot, Loger les immigrés: La Sonacotra, 1956–2006 (Bellecombe-en-Bauges, Éditions du Croquant, 2008), p. 67. A. Pitrou, 'Le logement des Nord-Africains à Marseille', Cahiers Nord-Africains, no. 82 (1961), p. 7. A. Sayad, et al., Migrance, op. cit., p. 139. R. Descloitres, et al., L'Algérie des bidonvilles, op. cit., p. 13. My terminology follows Todd Shepard, who notes that 'For French officials from the 1830s until independence in 1962, Algerian "Muslim" was above all a legal, rather than religious category.': T. Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization, op. cit., p. 12. 'Muslim' signals the fact that Algerians legally categorised as such did not necessarily practice Islam. J. Pelletier, Alger 1955, op. cit., pp. 31–32. See also R. Descloitres, et al., L'Algérie des bidonvilles, op. cit., pp. 27–30. For a detailed discussion of this history, see T. Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization, op. cit., pp. 19–54. For discussion of contemporaneous 'evolutionary housing' in Morocco, see M. Eleb, 'An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism: Écochard, Candilis, and ATBAT-Afrique,' in, S. Williams Goldhagen, R. Legault, eds, Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2000), pp. 55–73. Fondation Le Corbusier, R2 12 I45-3. Roland Simounet, 'La double notion du tissu', Techniques et Architecture, no. 306 (1975), p. 50. See also Z. Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations, op. cit., pp. 161–62. See Dominique Delaunay's photograph published in Z. Çelik, 'Bidonvilles, CIAM et grands ensembles', op. cit., p. 210. A. Sayad, et al., Migrance, op. cit., p. 137. The Sonacotra's earliest projects were described as 'transit apartment buildings with an educational aim' (immeubles de transit à but éducatif) and later, more simply, as cités de transit: M. Bernardot, Loger les immigrés, op. cit., p. 60. T. Durousseau, 'Ensembles et Résidences à Marseille,' op. cit. At least 100,000 rapatriés were estimated to have settled in Marseille: A. Sayad, et al., Migrance, op. cit., pp. 84–85. On popular representations of the pieds-noirs, see Éric Savarese, L'invention des pieds-noirs (Paris, Séguier, 2002). For discussion of official attempts to assimilate the pieds-noirs, see T. Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization, op. cit., pp. 220–21. See Sayad, et al., Migrance, op. cit., p. 106. Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail (hereafter ANMT), Simounet collection, 1997 017 306, January 6th, 1963: Simounet had briefly attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Algiers and in Paris, but never obtained a diploma. In addition to the proposed addition at Djenan el Hasan, Simounet designed the French and Swiss embassies and an American Cultural Centre in Algiers, three high schools for oasis towns in the Saharan region, and worked as a consultant for the Ministry of Agriculture. T. Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization, op. cit., pp. 214–17. The status of rapatrié gave access to benefits from the French government. See ANMT, Simounet collection, 1997 017 306–307, Correspondence from Algiers and Paris, 1962–67. The museum project initially had the unwieldy title 'Centre for the Conservation and Development of the Cultural Patrimony for the French originally from North Africa': for further discussion, see S. Crane, 'Architecture at the Ends of Empire: Urban Reflections between Algiers and Marseille', in, Gyan Prakash, Kevin Kruse, eds, The Spaces of the Modern City (New York, Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 99–143. J.-L. Cohen, 'Le Corbusier, Perret et les figures d'un Alger moderne,' op. cit., pp. 176–79. ANMT, Simounet collection, H1J 648, Logis d'Anne, M. Abi-Samra, 'Histoire d'un village ségrégé—Le Logis d'Anne', unpublished study for the Secretary of State for Rapatriés, November, 1983–May, 1984. Ibid., pp. 86–93. ANMT, Simounet collection, H1J 648, Logis d'Anne, R. Simounet, handwritten note, January 20th, 1983. M. Abi-Samra, 'Histoire d'un village ségrégé,' op. cit., p. 149.
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