L'Algérie et son patrimoine: Dessins français du XIXe siècle

At a time when the notion of heritage was still not widely shared in metropolitan France, architects went to inventory the riches of Algeria as early as 1830. Two important collections relating to these campaigns have been lying dormant in French libraries ever since: numerous surveys and watercolour drawings by Edmond Duthoit and Albert Ballu, at the Médiathèque de l'architecture et du patrimoine, and seven albums by Adolphe Delamare, at the Sorbonne. It is from their rediscovery that the authors of this book, themselves architects and teacher-researchers, originally from Algeria, resituate this other dimension of the colonial fact and underline the birth of a heritage consciousness.