Chevallier's Other Architects: A Sample
Mayor Chevallier's massive campaign for housing created opportunities for numerous architects, some based in Algeria, others in France. Restricted by economic considerations, focused on quantities, and built in haste, these projects were not memorable architectural creations and their success in providing decent living conditions was limited. However, their impact on the city of Algiers was significant. They played an important role in the shaping of the outskirts of Algiers in a process that recalls many cities throughout the world. Islands of new structures surrounded the city and contrasted with the congested architectural pluralism of Algiers proper. Because each housing project was treated as an individual unit without much consideration of its context and its links to neighboring settlements or the city itself, the resulting conglomeration lacked an urban cohesiveness. The projects themselves displayed a range of experimentation in their massing, architectural vocabulary, and unit plans.
The majority of housing complexes were high-rise ensembles , with low-rise projects few and far between. In the Cité Dessoliers in Maison-Carrée, the team of Barthe, Cazalet, and Solivères designed 250 "cells" of one, two, or three rooms that were covered by cement vaults and organized in six groups (Fig. 89). Each unit boasted a simple kitchen corner and a patio where the water closet/shower was located. The stated goals were "light, comfort, independence, and low cost."[60] Architects Georges Bize and Jacques Ducollet, responsible for another six hundred units in the same location, stated proudly that every unit was equipped with electricity, water, and sewage lines. These houses were "evidently very simple," yet they "conformed perfectly to the needs of the occupants, who, being used to gourbis , needed to adapt to an improved installation little by little." The dominant "simplicity" called for some justification and it was argued apologetically that while cost played an important role in the outcome, the Dessoliers housing still displayed the will of the authorities to do away with the "horrible plague of bidonvilles ."[61]
The Groupe des Cyclamens, an apartment complex in Clos Salembier, was organized as four individual but attached blocks. Louis Bérthy (whose site-abstract project for a cité indigène in 1939 was a horizontal scheme that quoted many aspects of local architecture) created here one hundred type évolutif units in six-story walk-ups, with four units per story in each block (Figs. 90 and 91). The unit sizes varied from one to
Figure 89.
(above) Barthe, Cazalet, and Solivères, Cité Dessoliers, overall view, 1954.
Figure 90.
(below) Bérthy, Groupe des Cyclamens, perspective drawing, 1957.
Figure 91.
Bérthy, Groupe des Cyclamens, typical
floor plan. (1) living room, (2) bedroom,
(3) water closet, (4) kitchenette, (5) entry,
(6) loggia, (7) public hallway.
four bedrooms, with three-bedroom apartments constituting the majority.[62] These were minimalist units that incorporated the few features determined to conform to the needs of "evolutionary" indigenous families: kitchenette in a corner of the living room, a loggia now reduced to a width of 1 meter (thus unusable as an extension of the living space and offering no privacy), and a water closet about 2 square meters that included a toilet, sink, and shower. The facades expressed the floor plans in a straightforward manner, the recesses of the balconies creating light and shade contrasts; a rectilinear geometry, generated by the prefabricated construction system, dominated the scheme. The architectural vocabulary and the massing aspired to Pouillon's principles in nearby Diar el-Mahçoul.[63]
Groupe des Cyclamens's east-west orientation was dictated by Gérald Hanning, the director of the Plan d'Urbanisme, to harmonize with the forthcoming Cité de Nador. Cité de Nador was built on a site cleared of squatter houses in 1955 and connected by a new road to the Route de la Femme Sauvage.[64] The architects in charge—Mauri, Pons, Gomis, and Tournier-Olliver—opted for two "bars," 100 and 72 meters long, respectively, forming between them a wide angle open to the south (Fig. 92). A predecessor of the Plan de Constantine schemes, this was perhaps the most uniform, and therefore the most economical, of all the housing projects realized under Chevallier. Each of the sixty-two units here was the same; about 35 square meters large, it consisted of a living room, a bedroom, a loggia/drying room (loggia-séchori ), a kitchenette, and a water closet.[65]
A review of the projects designed during the 1950s reveals a pattern shaped by adherence to a short checklist of prerequisites presumed essential. In the Cité des Eucalyptus at the border of Hussein-Dey and Maison-Carrée, architects Bize and Ducollet prioritized "maximum
Figure 92.
Mauri, Pons, Gomis, and Tournier-Olliver, Cité de Nador, view, 1958.
economy, solidity, and comfort" for the 600 units they designed (Fig. 93). Of these units, 450 were accommodated in longitudinal blocks placed in rows, whereas 150 were duplexes around communal courtyards. The long blocks bordered the main road connecting Algiers to el-Harrache; the duplexes were in the back. By placing the blocks perpendicular to each other, the architects created a hierarchy of public open spaces, interspersed with public facilities.
The 40-square-meter individual units in the higher blocks of the Cité des Eucalyptus repeated a similar configuration, the formula that had evolved from a consensus on the lifestyle of indigenous people: the combined living/cooking space opened to a terrace and a minimal bathroom space (in this case 0.75 square meter for a toilet, sink, and shower). The duplex units had a double-height living room and a kitchen-bathroom combination on the ground level and two bedrooms on the second floor (Fig. 94). A major difference from the earlier schemes was the placement of the bathroom inside the unit as opposed to its former location in the loggia, a change that stemmed in part from the diminished size of the latter. The toilet and the kitchen now became a unit (with the toilet door opening directly into the kitchen) in a most unhygienic combination. Perhaps it was again the new dimensions of the loggia that led the architects to make provisions for privacy in the Cité des Eucalyp-
Figure 93.
Bize and Ducollet, Cité des Eucalyptus, axonometric view.
Figure 94.
Bize and Ducollet, Cité des Eucalyptus,
plan and section of low-rise unit. (1) living
room, (2) bedroom, (3) bathroom,
(4) kitchenette, (5) entry, (6) patio,
(7) public hallway.
tus by including high screens that allowed for "correct ventilation" while satisfying the Muslims' "taste for apartments sealed off from the exterior."[66]
On Rue Léon-Roches at the periphery of Climat de France, Cité Taine E was built specifically for the families whose house were expropriated in the Marine Quarter. Architects Daure, Béri, Chauveau, and Magrou again relied on the template devised for loggias, kitchens, and bathrooms. Reliance on prefabrication validated the construction of a simple rectangular scheme, a north-south oriented "bar" that was 153 meters long and 11.15 meters wide. Twelve stories high, Taine E provided 284 apartments of mostly three rooms apiece and an average of 47 square meters. Inspired by the social amenities Le Corbusier had in-
Figure 95.
Nicholas Di Martino, Cité des Asphodèles, site plan.
corporated into his Unité d'Habitation, this project designated the top floor for a nursery school and children's playground.[67]
Thin, longitudinal blocks that could be placed with relative facility and without constructing ample terraces on the hills of Algiers became increasingly popular in the late 1950s. The form also catered to prefabricated construction systems efficiently and allowed for units to have cross-ventilation, if at times through the communal corridors—the "inner streets." In the Cité des Asphodèles on the northwestern hills of Algiers, Nicholas Di Martino attached the bars to each other, creating T-shaped buildings and open spaces between them that were meant to be shared by the residents (Fig. 95).[68] The facades were enlivened in a pattern that had become customary: the depth of the loggias provided a shadow contrast and the lattice-blocks of the water closets alluded to local architectural forms and geometric ornaments.
As Deluz argued, Chevallier's "humanist urbanism" followed in the footsteps of Marshal Lyautey, who had summarized his philosophy in several memorable remarks, among them "urbanism must be implanted first in the hearts of men."[69] Founded on the belief that urbanism could be used as a tool to reshape people's lives and, in the colonial context, gain the confidence of the local people by improving their living conditions, Chevallier's approach was considered the humanistic alternative to militaristic policies. Innumerable statements about the assumed power of good environments on people make it plain that the underlying agenda for the housing projects in Algeria was the pacification and control of colonized people by meeting one of their basic needs. In
meeting this need, Chevallier, together with his architects and urban planners, had attempted to understand the sociocultural structures of Algerian people and address them in their projects. To do so, they turned to the discourse on the "traditional" urban forms, the Algerian house, the Algerian family, and the Algerian woman—a discourse whose history was almost as long as the French occupation. By appropriating, taming, and rationalizing the domestic settings and their urban environments, the architects attempted to enter a realm of Algerian life whose obstinate impenetrability had become a source of colonial anguish.
Realities of the Algerian War proved that housing or other kinds of social reforms would not weaken the struggle for independence. Resistance to colonial rule found shelter even in the most thoughtfully designed new housing projects. Faced with the failure of social engineering and shaped by a more technocratic mentality, the next wave of construction in Algiers focused obsessively on numbers and ignored the humanistic dimensions of Chevallier's tenure.