Design Room, HEAD – Genève, Bâtiment H, Av. de Châtelaine 7
Join us for the second keynote of the What's the Future of Humanitarian Design Symposium where Samia Henni (ETH Zürich) will present on "Architecture of Counterrevolution".
Samia Henni will introduce and discuss the arguments of her book, Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (Zurich: gta Verlag, 2017, 2022; Paris: Editions B42, 2019). The book examines the roots and effects of French colonial spatial policies and military counterinsurgency operations in Algeria during the Algerian Revolution, or the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962). Henni’s study focuses on three interrelated spatial measures: the massive forced resettlement of Algerian populations; the mass-housing programs designed for the Algerian population as part of General Charles de Gaulle’s Plan de Constantine; and the fortified administrative new town planned for the protection of the French authorities during the last months of the Algerian Revolution. The aim is to depict the modus operandi of these settlements, their roots, developments, scopes, actors, protocols, impacts, and design mechanisms. The book received numerous prestigious awards, including the 2020 Spiro Kostof Book Award by the Society of Architectural Historians, the 2018 Silver Book Award by the Festival International du Livre d'Art et du Film (FILAF), and the 2018 Best Book Award in Theory of Art by the FILAF. The French translation was part of the 2019 Best Architecture Books Selection by L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui and has received extensive media coverage, including Mediapart and Le Monde.
Samia Henni is a historian of the built, destroyed and imagined environments. She is the author of the multi-award-winning Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria, and Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara, and the editor of Deserts Are Not Empty and War Zones. She is also the maker of exhibitions, such as Performing Colonial Toxicity (2023–04), Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria (2017–22), Archives: Secret-Défense? (2021), and Housing Pharmacology (2020). Currently, she is a Visiting Professor at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich.
This event is the second public keynote of the "What's the Future of Humanitarian Design Symposium", a part of the The Future of Humanitarian Design project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
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