LE CORBUSIER & ALGIERS:
A
NEW
URBANISM
By the early 20th century attitudes softened towards native populations. With the rise of avant-garde culture in France, stemming from Paris, (Celik, 1992), a new allure was found in the aesthetic mysticism of ‘Oriental’ Islamic culture, stimulating the value of Islamic urbanity. With this shifting colonial outlook Le Corbusier was supposed to a dualistic vision of the Islamic city, both influenced by the legacy of orientalist attitudes and captivated by the avant-garde appeal of eastern culture, beholding the Casbah of Algiers as a ‘glittering apparition that welcomes at dawn the boats arriving to the port.’ (Le Corbusier, 1941 in Celik 1992:62). Policy no longer favoured the oppression of Islamic urbanism, instead favouring an evolutionary urbanism, preserving, and in some parts restoring, the traditional Islamic city (Celik, 1992), but wholey favouring modernism, introducing staged developments that would ‘modernise’ the natives in an ordered fashion. Le Corbusier’s famed Obus Plan for Algiers proposed the entire separation of the ancient Casbah from modern French city, drawing a bridge that spanned over the traditional district thus supervising it. Le Corbusier found an avant-garde value in the Casbah’s aesthetic as a place of ‘picturesque struggles’ (1942 in Celik, 1997:42) and touristic opportunity (Celik, 1992), yet still perceived it ahistorically with orientalist cultural perceptions. Le Corbusier’s new urbanism paid homage to but was not persuaded by traditional Islamic architecture. Algiers was an intrinsic part of France, so its new urbanism should be that of French modernity. Le Corbusier envisaging the unification of France and French colonial Africa through a new urbanism, Algiers as the gateway, the ‘phoenix of France . . . reborn out of the ashes of the mother country’ (Le Corbusier, 1950 in Celik, 1992:66). Le Corbusier’s Obus Plan was never realised, but his attitude reflects that of the colonial administration, dually respecting traditional Islamic urbanism, yet envisaging a new modernity for Algiers.
23