The annexed buildings to the Si el Haoues Museum in M’Chouneche (Algeria): reuse and valorisation about the context

The Si el Haoues Museum in M’Chouneche (wilaya of Biskra, Algeria) is a site of memory, located in the birthplace of a renowned partisan in the Algerian struggle for independence. The Museum is significant not only for past events related to contemporary national history, having originally been the family home, but also as a notable example of the everyday space of early 20th century vernacular architecture. The subject of this research is the building annexed to the Museum, now abandoned, with great potential not only historical, anthropological (Chaoui Berber culture that has preserved the language, customs and traditional habitat), and “material” (made of raw earth masonry and palm wood floors and roofs) but also “contextual”, as it is located in the complex of a public Museum, in the M’Chouneche oasis in the fertile Abiod Valley and the Aurès Park (UNESCO Ten-tative list 2002) part of the Saharan Atlas in north-eastern Algeria. The paper will retrace its narrative through material culture and original/traditional uses to identify feasible intervention strategies and possible compatible reuse for its future valorisation, thanks also to the fruitful dialogue initiated with the M’Chouneche community.