In 2006, we photographed the original interior of this Algiers hotel, since extensively renovated. Here are a few images chosen from more than a thousand frames — along with a list of names that may pose an interesting question to design specialists.
While sorting through my hard drives, I came across two things.
First, the hundreds of photographs I had taken, in 2006, of the interior of the El Aurassi hotel in Algiers. And second — this is where the story gets interesting — a list of decorators' names that the hotel's management had given us at the time, and which, in all likelihood, came from its archives.
Twenty years later, while trying to find out who was behind those names, I understood what we had documented without realising it. Here is what I can state for certain, what I saw, and what I will simply allow myself to suppose.
How we ended up there
To begin with, this hotel was not the point at all.
I had been commissioned to photograph the oil-drilling sites of Hassi Messaoud, deep in the Algerian Sahara: an assignment that was extremely controlled and closely watched, where you photograph only what you are authorised to photograph.
If I was there, it was thanks to Matthieu Gorissen, the art director I was working with — a graduate of La Cambre, founder of the Oilinwater studio in Brussels and today a teacher at ESA Saint-Luc. He was the one who first drew me into this kind of journey: those slightly unusual professional projects that take you to places where, otherwise, you would never have set foot.
It was while passing through Algiers that we stumbled, almost by accident, upon the El Aurassi. You walk in, and you understand at once that this is not a hotel like any other.
What is certain: Luigi Moretti
The building itself is thoroughly documented.
Perched on the heights, overlooking the bay of Algiers, the El Aurassi has a silhouette that Algerois nickname « the air conditioner » — nine storeys of cubist modernity, inaugurated in 1975. The original project had been entrusted to an Egyptian architect, Mustapha Moussa, who envisioned a far taller tower. On his death, the work was taken over in 1968 by a name that changes everything: Luigi Moretti.
Moretti (1907–1973) is one of the greatest Italian architects of the twentieth century. To his name: the Watergate complex in Washington, the Stock Exchange Tower in Montreal, the Casa Il Girasole in Rome, cited in textbooks as a work that foreshadowed postmodernism. He is regarded today as the inventor of parametric architecture. The American heritage-listing application for the Watergate describes him as one of the most important Italian architects of the century — and explicitly mentions the El Aurassi (1968–73) as a close formal relative of the Watergate, with its dentilled balconies.
But Moretti was more than a builder: a collector, a gallerist, a publisher. For him, the building, the space, the light and the furniture formed a single gesture. A total work. He died in 1973, before the opening; his collaborators completed the project according to his vision.
What I saw: Saarinen, Eames, and the bespoke
I am no design specialist, but some pieces you recognise at a glance.
Saarinen's pedestal tables, his Tulip collection. The Eames chairs — orange in the rooms facing the mountain, blue on the sea side. Set in the light, that tall arc lamp of steel on a marble base: the Castiglioni brothers' Arco. Further on, lamps that called to mind Noguchi's Akari, swollen like luminous bladders. For the pieces I recognise, these are originals, not reissues — of that I am certain.
And even then, I am speaking only of the production furniture. Because the most striking thing was the bespoke work. Pieces in blown glass made for the place. Immense chandeliers. In the suites, screens of rare delicacy. Each of these pieces was exceptional, massive, conceived for this space and for it alone. Everything took part in a single intention: that of a total work, in which the smallest object extended the architect's gesture.
What I suppose: a team of leading decorators
And this is where that list comes in.
I do not have the official document from the hotel's archives. I no longer even have the original paper — only the names I had noted down at the time. I cannot therefore state anything: only share what these names, once identified, allow one to glimpse.
Among those names, as far as I was able to read them, were:
- Joseph-André Motte (1925–2013) — one of the greatest French decorators of the century: the fit-outs of Orly, of Roissy, of the Louvre, the seating of the Paris métro. Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.
- Maxime Old (1910–1991) — trained under Ruhlmann, decorator of the ocean liner France.
- Raphaël (Raphaël Raffel, 1912–2000) — who furnished the Assemblée Nationale and refurbished the Hôtel de Ville of Paris.
- Cesare Casati (born 1936) — Italian designer, whose Pillola lamp belongs to the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York.
To these names is added an Italian firm, Centro mec mobili, near Milan — most likely the maker of the furniture.
If this list speaks true, then the interior of the El Aurassi was not merely « in the spirit of the seventies »: it was the work of a team of leading ensembliers, brought together under Moretti's architecture. One detail makes the hypothesis all the more credible: Old, Motte and Raffel had exhibited together at the Brussels World's Fair, in 1958. Exactly the kind of casting one would assemble for a state hotel designed to receive heads of state.
Since then, a first check has lent weight to the trail: the biography of Maxime Old does indeed mention the El Aurassi among his works, alongside the liner France and the presidential palace of Bourguiba. For the three other names, I have found, to this day, no public trace linking them to the hotel — which proves nothing, one way or the other.
For Maxime Old, then, it is no longer quite a supposition. For the others, I hold to what the hotel entrusted to us, and I gladly leave it to the specialists to settle the matter.
The return, and the book we never made
We knew two things: that this decor was exceptional, and that it would soon change. A renovation of the hotel had been announced.
So we came back. A few months later, for a whole week, with the idea of making a book of it. The management, amused and intrigued by our approach, opened the doors to us — rooms, suites, bars, common spaces — and entrusted us with that list of names. We photographed as much as we could, methodically, while it was still possible.
And then… nothing. Life, other projects, time. The book never happened. The images went back into archives, and there they stayed for twenty years. I am reopening this file today, among so many others.
Since then, the hotel has been modernised — and rightly so: a great hotel must evolve, must meet today's standards in order to keep welcoming guests. From what one can see online, it is above all the rooms and the furniture that have been entirely rethought, while certain original elements — the ceilings, notably — appear to have been kept. We have not gone back in person to see for ourselves; we therefore refrain from asserting exactly what remains. What one can say is that the atmosphere we had photographed in 2006 — that production furniture and that bespoke work brought together in a single gesture — now belongs to another time.
Why we are sharing these images
Let us be clear: we are not historians. It is entirely possible that all this is already known, studied, documented somewhere, and that specialists know far more than we do about the El Aurassi and its decorators. If so, all the better.
But it may also be that these photographs, taken just before the renovation, and this list of names passed on by the hotel, add a modest piece to the puzzle. It is in this spirit that we are bringing them out today: not to claim anything, but to make them available. If they can be of use to researchers, students, design enthusiasts, or to the archives working on Moretti, we would be glad to have contributed. And there are many more: the few frames published here are only a glimpse of a far larger body of work, which we gladly hold at the disposal of anyone who might wish to explore it.
There is one last element. Our archives also contain the reproduction, frame by frame, of an album that seems to date from the hotel's opening — in all likelihood the official views of the time, showing certain common spaces in their original arrangement, furniture included. Those images are not ours: they are reproductions, and their original authors remain unknown to us. But they too complete the picture, and might speak to specialists.
A point worth making, while we are at it. These photographs are ours. The building and its furniture are the work of leading architects and designers, whose rights still run; out of respect for them, we prefer to share these images as a document. That, it seems to us, is the fairest way to keep them alive.
Part of the interior of the El Aurassi has changed. But somewhere, in a suite bathed in light above the bay of Algiers, Moretti's gesture — that of Maxime Old, perhaps also of Motte, of Raffel and of Casati — goes on existing.
For the length of a photograph.
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This report would not have existed without Matthieu Gorissen — art director, today founder of Oilinwater in Brussels — with whom these images were conceived and made. The attribution of the decorators rests on a list of names passed on at the time by the hotel's management; it still calls for confirmation by the archives — if it is not already established in the architect's official holdings or elsewhere (Maxime Old's involvement, for its part, is already attested by his biographers). Specialists, historians, researchers and design enthusiasts will be better placed than we are to answer that question.
Julien Claessens — Beau Edition
