The Climat de France is a French colonial social housing project in Algeria designed by Fernand Pouillon and currently renamed Oued Koriche. Located approximately 8km west of the country’s capital, Algiers, it was built from 1954 to 1957, right in the middle of the Algerian War of Independence. The project has several buildings with different scales. Its most prominent structure is a large rectangular building that houses 3000 dwellings, along with a spacious interior square similar to a Roman forum and exterior windows inspired by the mosaics found in Islamic architecture.
This social housing scheme has a complex history, involving the integration of Algerians into the French lifestyle, the use of modern architecture to challenge traditional Muslim ways of living, and the transformation of its collective square into a site of protest and rebellion.
According to Alan O'Leary, the initial aim of the Climat de France was to "acclimatize" the rural population to the French lifestyle and French values. In the early 1950s, the government commissioned Fernand Pouillon to design a new housing project for relocating Muslims who had come from agricultural areas and settled in slums around the city. The project was presented as an act of generosity from the French authority to Algerian citizens who were spatially separated from Europeans in the city of Algiers. Zeynep Çelik, an architectural historian, also noted that the government hoped the Muslim families would appreciate the advantages of modern comforts such as running water and electricity. These new needs were expected to generate "a new conception of work, a new organization of the family cell, a new mentality.”
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The Distinctive Mosques of Sub-Saharan AfricaFernand Pouillon designed this housing development to accommodate over 30,000 inhabitants, creating a self-contained city with its network of streets, squares, schools, services, and residential blocks. The 25-hectare urban plan was also intended to resemble a casbah, a North African fortress. It consisted of smaller housing blocks of different heights arranged around a central monumental housing block and a grand courtyard space called "200 Colonnes." This courtyard, measuring 235 by 40 meters, is adorned with nearly 200 three-story stone columns and is surrounded by shops on the ground floor and residential units above. It provides a shared space for residents, with all units opening onto it through a public outdoor walkway.
Despite the grandeur of the exterior structure, the design of the interior spaces presented a stark contrast. The individual units, comprising a living room, one to two bedrooms, a kitchenette, and a bathroom, all fitted with small fenestrations, featured cramped and precarious dwellings with 2-meter low ceilings. These conditions contributed to poor living standards and health issues, reflecting the architectural intentions of the French state towards colonized citizens. This modern social housing design deviated from the traditional Algerian houses with private courtyards that Algerians were accustomed to, forcing them to adapt to new living arrangements within the socio-political climate.
Pouillon further developed the project as a contrast to the popular use of reinforced concrete in modern buildings at that time. The building was constructed using cream-colored limestone quarried in southern France and shipped by boat to Algiers. The limestone blocks were pre-cut to specified sizes to reduce construction time and labor costs. The surfaces of the blocks were intentionally left rough to emphasize the massive scale of the dry-stacked masonry. This design was inspired by Ottoman architecture that the Turks built during their occupation of Algiers, creating the appearance of a fortified stone surface with only small windows and ventilation holes.
The monumentality of the exterior and the precarious nature of the interior shaped the perceptions, experiences, and adaptations of Algerians to these buildings. The Climat de France project aimed to provide modern and comfortable housing, contrasting with the informal settlements outside Algiers. However, it failed to create a sense of belonging or make people feel at home. As Alan O'Leary observed, "The Algerians may have resided within the buildings of the Climat de France, but they resisted the architectural designs imposed upon them." This housing initiative, originally intended to introduce a European way of life to Algeria, was eventually appropriated by the very communities it was intended to govern. The large courtyard spaces of these housing units became socio-political spaces for asserting national identity and striving for independence.
The Climat de France has become a significant symbol of protest, unrest, rebellion, socio-political engagement, and the lasting effects of neocolonial oppression. Additionally, the housing complex has suffered from a lack of maintenance and proper rehabilitation by government stakeholders. These legacies are evident in insufficient housing, lack of urban infrastructure, and scarcity of social resources, leading to the housing complex playing significant roles in events such as the Algerian war, Arab Springs, and the 2019 Hirak Movement amongst others. Its growth has also led to the establishment of several informal settlements around it, including habitations on the rooftop of 200 Colonnes. This has increased the number of inhabitants and added pressure on the building's services. Its renaming as Oued Koriche marks the beginning of the reappropriation and decolonization of the territory.
References
O’Leary, Alan. “The Battle of Algiers at Fifty: End of Empire Cinema and the first Banlieue Film.” Film Quarterly, vol. 70, no. 2, 2016, pp. 17-29.
Çelik, Zeynep. Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations. Algiers under French Rule. University of California Press, 1997.
