Building Beyond the Mediterranean: Studying The Archives of European Businesses (1860-1970)

Among the companies represented, some had outposts in the major capitals south of the Mediterranean. Thus, Hennebique had offices in Cairo, Algers, Tunis and Istanbul (Constantinople), as did the Belgian firm Baume & Marpent which opened an office in Cairo in 1893 after being represented initially by a local partner. Finally, a large number of them set up permanent installations in the south, such as the numerous Italian construction companies with bases in Egypt and Tunisia.

European companies penetrated the markets south of the Mediterranean through the creation of major transport infrastructure (railway lines, roads, canals). The Maghreb, which was gradually annexed to the French colonial Empire from the mid-19th century on, became the preferred region of activity of French companies. It was also in the Ottoman Empire which in 1938 began to reform its institutions and initiated accelerated modernisation that European companies were to spread their activities.
The construction of the Suez Canal to unite the waters of the Red Sea and those of the Mediterranean, which opened in 1859, is among the most famous European projects. Railway lines (bridges, tunnels, water reservoirs) used to deliver raw materials from newly conquered territories to the ports of the southern Mediterranean as well as the development of these ports (breakwaters, quays, lighthouses) nevertheless constitute the most numerous contracts. The crossing of wadis in the Maghreb or of the Nile and its canals in Egypt required the creation of a multitude of bridges for which European companies fought over contracts, pitting two construction techniques against each other: steel structures and reinforced concrete.
From the beginning of the 20th century, hydraulic developments (dams, levees, drainage systems, sewers) to improve the irrigation of agricultural land or to sanitize cities became a very promising market for European public works companies.

If the bridges built by major European companies in the second half of the 19th century are all in steel, the 20th century confirmed the arrival of reinforced concrete. While the majority of steel bridges were entirely prefabricated in Europe and only assembled in situ, the first structures in reinforced concrete were more conducive to the cultural integration of local expertise.

• The company Baume & Marpent (1853-1956) is known worldwide for its steel bridges. The production of bridges of all types (fixed, mobile, or suspension bridges, and drawbridges) was undeniably a specialty of the Belgian firm. Between 1894 and 1952 the company supplied 158 bridges to Egypt, including its emblematic achievement, the famous Imbaba Bridge (1912-1924) in Cairo.
• Between the end of the 19th century and World War I, Hennebique firm studied more than sixty projects in Algeria; about fifteen, in Tunisia; a dozen, in Egypt. Regardless of the impact of the “propaganda” developed by Hennebique, the public authorities were undoubtedly more sensitized to the advantages of reinforced concrete in a geographical context where the flash flooding characteristic of a wadi frequently demolished structures, sweeping away steel decks and washing masonry piers away.
• Even though Italian firms were not so firmly established abroad as Belgian, French, German and British steel construction companies, some of them won prestigious contracts. In 1929, the Società Nazionale Officine Savigliano won the competition organized by the Egyptian Ministry of Communication for the design and construction of two railway bridges in Girga on the Cairo-Shellal line. Italian contractors were also active in the construction of small concrete bridges over Egyptian drains.

Between 1880 and the end of the 1920s, the Italian hydraulic engineer Luigi Luiggi was one of the most active designers of ports along the southern Mediterranean coast. His archives which include historical cartography, plans, reports, and descriptions of construction systems, is a valuable source of information for both historians researching the development of Libyan and Egyptian ports during this period and businesses in the field of restoration of large structures.

As written in the journal Le Béton armé in 1900, “water-tower construction is one of the primary applications for reinforced concrete, and this kind of work has been an important source of business for all reinforcement systems.” Responding to the shortage of fresh water caused by the unstable supply of river and rainwater in northern Africa, European contractors were very active in the construction of water tanks. The Italian firm Porcheddu was the leading contractor in the field of reinforced concrete water tower construction beginning in 1903. In 1912, the company presented several proposals to the Italian Ministry of Colonies for tanks for the development of Libyan ports.

As early as ancient times, the Egyptians created an irrigation system for the land along the Nıle which they have continually improved. The major hydraulic works initiated by Muhammad Ali from 1830 and continuted until today have provided vast opportunities to European contractors. They include the construction of structures such as locks and weirs for the new irrigation canals and the first Assouan Dam, built in 1902 and twice raised, first in 1912 and again in 1933 with the participation of Italian contractors.

Companies which were active in project management provide us with a huge quantity of sources which document an entire section of the history of company urbanism with great precision. Like the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez to which we owe, from 1862, the construction of the towns of Port-Saïd, Ismaïlia and Port-Tawfiq in Egypt, companies exploited (and sometimes continue to do so) the mining resources of the subsoil of northern Africa (in Morocco, for example, the Office Chérifien des Phosphates, the Société Chérifienne des Charbonnages de Jérada, the Société Anonyme Chérifienne d’Études Minières) were behind a multitude of small settlements, inspired by the models of workers’ villages created during the first half of the 19th century in Europe. In Egypt, the Società Egiziana per Estrazione & Commercio Fosfati, an Italian company which ran phosphate mines along the Red Sea, provides an especially interesting case study of the spread of Italian rationalist architecture.
The architecture of allotments for staff and their organisation compared with productions and equipment areas reflects the pragmatism of designers who were careful to adapt the logics of engineering to the international ideals of architecture and urbanism marked by paternalism.

Because most the company towns were dependent on natural resource sites, their architecture and environmental setting were of a special character. They all showed specific equipment linked to this resource. Extractive industries provided large areas for storage and waste disposal and also developed transportation systems such as conveyor belts or aerial ropeways. The Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez which was responsible for maintaining and operating the Canal owned large repair workshops.
But the most emblematic edifice of a company town was usually the administration building.

By the beginning of the 20th century only a small proportion of housing was erected by companies for their employees. In isolated locations, they had however little alternative but to build accommodation. This was the case for the mining towns of Morocco located in mountain regions and those of the Suez Canal in the desert land of the Isthmus of Suez. Often inspired by the European model of town planning, new towns built during the inter-war period were characterized by significant spatial segregation between the native and European quarters, as well as between those of white-collar workers and labourers.

A model company town was one in which the paternalism of the owner extended beyond the basic architectural requirements of workshops or mines. In the case of Moroccan and Egyptian mining towns or those along the Suez Canal, developers also provided social facilities such as schools, meeting halls, religious buildings, recreation buildings and sports centres.

European companies were especially active in the construction of public and private buildings during the first half of the 20th century. Thus, the Associazione nazionale per soccorrere i missionari italiani e i suoi ingegneri (ANMI), the mutual assistance company which accompanied the Italian migration across the Mediterranean, was behind a large amount of housing and built infrastructure (schools, hospitals, etc.) in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. The archives of the ANMI thus provide unpublished documentation on the works of Italian architects who are often unknown.
In Algeria, making the most of an expanding real estate market at the end of the 1920s, private developers built a number of projects. In view of the information provided by the archives, these developments show close collaboration between the engineer-agents and licensees of Hennebique patents and numerous French architects.
Dtructural steel companies are especially known for their structures, but they were also active in architecture and more specifically erected industrial buildings (hangars and workshops, warehouses), such as the Belgian company Baume & Marpent, builder of warehouses in Cairo and in the towns along the Suez Canal, or the Società nazionale officine Savigliano, which stood out in the creation of shelving for the Vallianos Library in Athens.

Major colonial banks, such as the Compagnie Algérienne and the Crédit Foncier d’Algérie et de Tunisie in Algeria, were important clients of French contractors. Silos for storing commodities they controlled as collateral for loans and new agencies in provincial towns were among their major projects.
Thanks to its patent, the Hennebique agency was also very active in the construction of garages thanks. Reinforced concrete beams allowed the construction of wide spans and freed the floor area for the movement of vehicles.

As many historians have emphasized, profits made by settlers who owned large agricultural estates in Algeria were often invested in property speculation and in businesses. A large proportion of the activities of the French agency Hennebique in northern Africa is related to these investors.

Most of the drawings presented below are coming from the archives of the ANMI. Established in 1887 in Florence, the ANMI (Associazione Nazionale per Soccorrere i Missionari Italiani – National Association for the Assistance of Italian Missionaries) was the most important promoter of Italian works in the Middle East and Northern Africa (with the exception of Libya) until the outbreak of World War II. This association, which led to the creation of technical offices for the development of blueprints, planned many school and hospital buildings for Italian communities. These were all designed and built by Italian architects and contractors.

At the turn of the 20th century resort tourism in the southern Mediteranean began to become a valuable contributor to national economies.
Water front promenade and sports centres in the famous seaside resort city of Alexandria, hotels and theaters built by rich cosmopolitan investors, antiquities museums exhibiting local heritage were made available to the wealthiest members of colonial societies and provided many contracts to local and European construction firms.

The archives of companies also renew our knowledge of the restoration of monumental heritage. Unexpected projects were revealed in the archives of the reinforced concrete company Hennebique such as at the Great Mosque of Omeyyades in Damascus (Syria) or that of the Mohammad Ali mosque of the Cairo citadel (Egypt). In the second case Hennebique, in competition with ten other major companies did not win the contract which was awarded to the Swiss company Rothpletz & Lienhard.
European companies also played a major role in the displacement of temples in Nubia. This “Pharaonic” project highlights previously unknown cooperation between major companies. The Abou Simbel joint venture which won the contract in 1963 thus included the French company Grands Travaux de Marseille, the German Hochtief from Essen, the Italian group Impresit-Girola-Lodigiani (Impregilo) of Milan, the Swedish group Skanska & Sentab of Stockholm, and the Egyptian company Atlas.
All these unpublished documents are of interest, not only to research, but also contain useful information to all those who work on the conservation of recent heritage. Having precise and reliable information on the processes and materials used in construction is a guarantee of reliable and good quality restoration when the time comes for a change of use.

The restoration of the Muhammad Ali Mosque in Cairo represents an important case study.
Initiated by the Egyptian government under the supervision of a technical commission composed of both Egyptian and European engineers, the tender was won by a Swiss company, Rothpletz & Lienhard, over offers by eleven other firms. Photo albums now conserved in Switzerland, allow the whole restoration process to be documented.

Much has been written about the rescue of the temples of Abu Simbel, especially in the 1960s during the international campaign launched by UNESCO and when rescue operations were in progress. Nevertheless, the history of the competition between European companies trying to find the most inovative and aesthetic designs remains less documented. Private archives of Italian engineers recently collected have now partially filled this gap.

The investigation of archives relating to craftsmanship, in particular arts applied to building finishings (ironwork, mosaics, glasswork) are especially promising. Research on metalworkers, who created numerous Art Deco style doors, for example, has only just begun, as has work on mosaic artists who, like the Frenchman of Italian origin, Odorico spread their works throughout the world. Furniture makers associated with interior decorators, such as the metalworker Paul Kiss, based in Paris and connected with the artist Edmond Soussa, or even Italian companies Berté & Gaeta, Nistri, Parvis, all with bases in Cairo, were active participants in the proliferation of European crafts around the Mediterranean as much as the spread, in Europe, of the taste for Arab style décors.

The French metal craftsman Émile Robert campaigned strongly for a return to wrought iron in the 1890s, after a century of cast ironwork.
During the interwar years, thanks to their participation in the International Exhibitions in Paris and in many of the International Exhibitions around the world, some metal craftsmen earned a solid reputation. They obtained orders for prestigious buildings such as banks, embassies, consulates and palaces.

Using a vocabulary that drew on Eastern and Arabic motifs, often mixed or toned down with European suggestions and recollections, the entrepreneurs working in the field of interior design sometimes guided and sometimes met the taste of their clients, who were particularly sensitive to art and luxury.
Some of the designers, gifted with business sense and caution, took advantage of the favorable circumstances and became modern entrepreneurial figures.