Brutalism in Algeria

Algeria inherited a strong concrete tradition from French modernism in North Africa and continued building ambitiously after independence in 1962, commissioning universities, memorials and civic complexes from international and local architects. The Cathédrale du Sacré-Cœur d'Alger (1963) by Paul Herbé and Jean Le Couteur, begun under French rule and completed at the moment of independence, encloses its circular nave in a hyperbolic concrete shell and ranks among the most structurally daring churches of its era. Later state commissions, including work by Oscar Niemeyer for Algerian universities, extended the country's concrete monumentalism through the 1970s.