Locating architecture, post-colonialism and culture: contextualisation in Algiers

Through discussion of the case of Algiers, this paper exposes the forces by which architecture as a system of meanings and experiences is affected by a broader network of meaning. It examines how the built environment can contribute to the preservation of cultural values, and can also act as a physical instrument of cultural change. The study of the way that the built environment was produced in Algiers under Ottoman rule (fifteenth – nineteenth centuries), and the subsequent transformations that occurred under French colonialism (nineteenth – twentieth centuries), along with the cultural implications of each period, reveals that the extent to which architecture and culture relate to/affect each other depends on the broader political, economic and social context.