The People's National Assembly building is a public building in Algiers and home of Algeria's

People's National Assembly The People's National Assembly ( ar, المجلس الشعبي الوطني, al-Majlis al-Sha'abi al-Watani; ber, Asqamu Aɣerfan Aɣelnaw; french: Assemblée populaire nationale), abbreviated APN, is the lower house of the Algerian Parliament. ...

. It was designed in 1934 and inaugurated in 1951 as a new

city hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

for the Greater Algiers, and repurposed following the country's independence in 1962.

Background

The building's location was previously used by a logistical branch of the French military (), built during the

Second French Empire The Second French Empire (; officially the French Empire, ), was the 18-year Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 14 January 1852 to 27 October 1870, between the Second and the Third Republic of France. Historians in the 1930s ...

. The municipality had previously been located, from 1850 to 1883, in the of the

Casbah of Algiers The Casbah ( ar, قصبة, ''qaṣba'', meaning citadel) is the citadel of Algiers in Algeria and the traditional quarter clustered around it. In 1992, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed ...

; and from 1883 to the mid-20th century on the Algiers waterfront, now , in the former building that still hosts the Casbah municipality.

History

In 1934, an architectural competition was held to build a new city hall for the expanding metropolis of Algiers. The competition's winners, the Paris-based brothers Edouard and in a team with local architect Jean-Louis Ferlié, designed a compact building in late

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

Stripped Classicism Stripped Classicism (or "Starved Classicism" or "Grecian Moderne") Jstor is primarily a 20th-century classicist architectural style stripped of most or all ornamentation, frequently employed by governments while designing official buildings. I ...

style. The building was substantially completed in 1941 but was then used in the wartime context by civilian and military departments of the French state, which only returned it to the Algiers municipality in 1945. Given the post-war scarcity, the finishing works were protracted and not entirely completed at the time of official inauguration in 1951. In the 2010s, plans were considered to relocate the People's National Assembly and the

Council of the Nation The Council of the Nation ( ar, مجلس الأمة, Majlis al-Ummah) is the upper house of the Algerian Parliament. It is composed of 144 members, 2/3 of which are elected indirectly and 1/3 of which are appointed by the president of Algeria. ...

in a new Algerian Parliament complex, to be built northeast of Les Fusillés Station in the waterfront neighborhood of

Hussein Dey Hussein Dey (real name Hüseyin bin Hüseyin; 1765 – 1838; ar, حسين داي) was the last Dey of the Deylik of Algiers. Early life He was born either in İzmir or Urla in the Ottoman Empire. He went to Istanbul and joined the Canoneers ...

Notes

Legislative buildings Buildings and structures in Algiers Government buildings in Algeria Art Deco architecture in Algeria {{Algeria-struct-stub

Background

History

See also

Notes