Need some weekend reading inspiration? Jason Oddy's photographic study of Oscar Niemeyer’s Algerian buildings is a fascinating exploration of architecture's inseparable relationship to revolutionary politics
’s Algerian buildings, set alongside research and archival documents, explores the architecture’s inseparable relationship to revolutionary politics in a new book from Columbia University Press, titledOne afternoon in the British Library, Jason Oddy, photographer, artist and writer, stumbled across some Oscar Niemeyer buildings he was unfamiliar with. The sweeping curves, the volume and the story telling felt familiar, but the location – in Algeria – did not.
Niemeyer got started, designing the University of Constantine, with a sweeping concrete rendition of an open book supported by pilotis for the auditorium, completed in 1975. Then came the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumédiène and the Salle Omnisports known as ‘La Coupole’ for the 1975 Meditteranean Games in Algier’s Olympic Park.
It was an exchange between architect and commissioner that summarized the politics of this place for Oddy: ‘Your mosque is beautiful, but it is quite revolutionary,’ said Boumédiène of the design. To which Niemeyer replied, ‘It is revolutionary, but the revolution cannot be stopped halfway.’ On his return to Algiers, Oddy spent three weeks at the three venues, carefully documenting everything. His photographic technique, using a 5x4 inch plate camera, requires time and consideration that has become central to his style: ‘Unwieldy and slow-moving it obliges me to explore places in a measured, almost meditative way.’ And his results are therefore ‘traces of a deliberate engagement with space’.
’Clavier’ by Jason Oddy – a work showing photographs of the doors of 24 identical lecture halls at the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene, each of which bears a different letter from the Roman alphabet. Laid out in the form of a keyboard, the work raises questions about cultural, linguistic and scriptorial colonialism.
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Oscar Niemeyer’s Algerian architecture uncoveredJason Oddy’s photographic study of Oscar Niemeyer’s Algerian buildings, set alongside research and archival documents, explores the architecture’s inseparable relationship to revolutionary politics in a new book from Columbia University Press, titled T...
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