University Seminar on the Theory and History of Media
The essay examines onyx extracted from quarries near Tlemcen in Western Algeria. It offers an alternative account of the rise of polychromy in Parisian architecture, relating it to France’s national efforts to expand its quarrying industry. It demonstrates how the annexation of Algeria in 1848 played a key role in stimulating the development of quarries in the colony, providing an abundant supply of materials that fueled the increasing use of polychrome stone in French architecture. By examining two iconic Parisian buildings—the tomb of Napoleon and Garnier’s Opera—this study proposes rethinking these monuments as representations of France’s imperial ambitions and its global reach.
Ralph Ghoche is a nineteenth-century architectural historian and Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at Barnard College. Ghoche is currently immersed in two major research projects centered on French urban and territorial practices in Algeria. The first project, titled Christians in the Casbah, examines the role played by the Catholic Church in Algeria in the decades following the colonial conquest of 1830. It focuses on how the Church reshaped urban space in Algiers through the erasure, conversion, and construction of buildings to advance its goal of resurrecting Augustinian Christendom in North Africa. The second project centers on stone quarries in Algeria during the French colonial period (1830–1962), exploring the extraction, circulation, and processing of stone for the building industry in order to reveal how colonial exploitation of Algeria’s ancient resources contributed to both the material and symbolic foundations of French imperialism. Ghoche holds a professional degree in architecture from McGill University and a Ph.D. in architectural history and theory from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. Ghoche has also written extensively on French architecture and its relationship to theories of ornament, archaeology, and aesthetics in the nineteenth century. His first book, Ornament and Symbol in French Romantic Architecture, will be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press this spring. He is co-chair of the Columbia University Seminar Beyond France, a member of the editorial board of Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale, urbaine et paysagère, and a co-lead on the project Seeds of Diaspora, funded by the Center for the Study of Social Difference.
Image: Adrien Dauzats, Le passage des Portes-de-Fer (1839)
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