Abstract
Like other countries of the African continent, Algeria has endured the French colonization, during 132 years. After its independence, in 1962, the country has inherited an important built heritage, not testifying to its culture, but that of his colonizer. We worked on the case of downtown Oran, the most European city in the country, and by examining the different strata of development of its colonial built heritage, we set the problematic of its current becoming, combining both its conservation, its rehabilitation and its actualization by contemporary architecture. In order to make this research, we have developed a grid of characteristics of buildings in Oran, which served us as a basis for our typological analysis of buildings and to the evaluation of the heritage value of existing constructions, and the rate of inscription of current transformations into the existing landscape. We also conducted surveys and interviews, during the period between 2013 and 2016 in Oran downtown. This approach is characterized by the highlighting of the elements of the conceptual originality of the colonial heritage and the search for their future, in relation to the socio-cultural dimensions of the country. We hold back that, of by its conception, the colonial heritage is admirable, nevertheless, its conservation is realized through an extremely complex process, conditioned by the policies of the State, the behavior of the users and the cultural and identity data of the country.
