Visions through innovation, André Ravéreau’s Ten Kilometres Plan for the valley of M’Zab

The valley of M'Zab is locateci about 600 km south of Algiers on the edge of the northern Sahara. Characterised by a dry cli mate and arid land, the valley is unsuitable for human settlement, and for this reason it was chosen by a group of religious dissidents, the Ibadis, who took refuge here around the year 1000. The lbadis founded 5 fortified cities (Ksour), known as the Pentapolis of Ghardaïa. In the late 1950s, the M'Zab valley attraetecd new and strong economie interests due to the discovery of hydrocarbon resources: Hassi Messaoud oilfield, 250 km southeast of Ghardaïa, and the Hassi R'Mel gas field, 60 km north of Ghardaïa. The new extraction activities caused a further boost of migration to the cities of the Pentapolis. The valley became a new desert hub and the direct consequence was its fast and unorganised urbanisation. Just before Algerian lndependence, the Agence du Plan d'Alger scheduled the drafting of a Plan (Plan Directeur General) for the M'Zab valley under the direction of Gérald Hanning. The architect André Ravéreau was contacted in 1960 to assist Jean-Jacques Deluz and Robert Hansberger in drawing up the plan. André Ravéreau (Limoges 1919-) studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he attended Auguste Perret's atelier. The Plan for the valley of M'Zab is deeply influenced by André Ravéreau's vision, related to the territorial investigation he made together with his wife, the photographer Manuelle Roche. The goal of Ravérau's Plan idea was not only to control the urban expansion within the valley through technical planning instruments, but to propose a design that would take account of the Pentapolis's traditional settlements and its architecture, as well as of the landscape with particular attention to the valley orography. While the plans design ed by the Agence du Plan d'Alger (1954-59) for Algiers have been widely documented and studied - even those that were never realized - the plans for the M'Zab valley (1958-62), are almost unknown. Nowadays there exists only an incomplete and fragmentary documentation. The aim of the paper is to investigate the innovative potential of the Plan for the valley of M'Zab, through unpublished drawings, kindly provided by Ravéreau's private Archive, and interpretative drawings to be developed during my PhD research, opening questions to its contemporary value.