Contribution à la connaissance de l'architecture des années trente a Alger. Monographie hôtel Es-Safir (Ex Aletti)

Abstract

Paul Guion (1881-1972) one of the architects of Algiers in the twentieth century, he is author of several buildings in Algiers, as well as artist of the collection of drawings and paintings of the Kasbah of Algiers. His talents as an artist, his training as a technician and his collaboration with his father-in-law engineer Paul Régnier, quickly allowed him to integrate in the field and become one of the most active architects during the period between the wars (1919-1939). Paul Guion witnessed the political and urban changes that hit the French-speaking North African colony, especially the new urban proposals that swayed between restrictions and pragmatism on one hand and the madness and innovation on the other. The centennial celebration of the colonization (1930) which allowed the architects to celebrate the profession through the construction of buildings representative of the historical context and suitable for the reception of this event, Guion must at this date his most famous work : the National Museum of Fine Arts of Hamma. Architectural and urban manifestations, such as the 1933 and 1936 town planning and architectural exhibitions, played a role in promoting local architects including Paul Guion, and their interactions with the most influential metropolitan figures in the example of Le Corbusier and Perret Brothers. Paul Guion is also one of the architects who sought to find a style specific to the country, an "Algerianist" style that combines elements of several identities at once: Mediterranean, Moorish, Berber, European and modern, resulting in a new architectural expression. This research follows the professional career of the architect facing the revival of the time through the exhibition of a good part of his works. Between new legislation, dominance of government architects on public commissions, the beginnings of modernism, multiplication of construction actors and aesthetic trends, the architect will adopt a new architectural expression that finds in the site and local aesthetics a means of transposition of the metropolitan technique.