Please join us for a conversation around Samia Henni’s latest publication, Toxicité Coloniale : Documenter le paysage radioactif dans le Sahara, published in French by Éditions B42. On this occasion, Henni will present how this project came to be and the creative process behind this edition.

Toxicité coloniale looks back at French nuclear testing programs conducted between 1960 and 1966 in the Algerian Sahara. This secret program, which took place during and after the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), enabled the French colonial regime to detonate four atmospheric atomic bombs, thirteen underground bombs, and conduct other nuclear experiments in the desert. While the vast majority of archival documents are still classified as secret today, Toxicité coloniale brings together a variety of sources documenting the violent history of France’s activities in Algeria. The book constitutes a corpus at the intersection of spatial, social, and environmental justice for those interested in architecture, landscape, and archival practices from a postcolonial perspective.

This event is free of charge, but space is limited, so registration is recommended.

From February 19 to April 12, 2026, the exhibition Toxicité coloniale : Architecture et paysage radioactifs français dans le Sahara is presented at the Centre de Design de l’UQAM.

Samia Henni is an architectural historian and curator interested in built, destroyed, and imagined environments. Using textual and visual strategies, her practice questions the histories of these environments produced by the processes and mechanisms of colonization, forced displacement, nuclear weapons, resource extraction, and war. Henni obtained her PhD in architectural history and theory from ETH Zurich and has taught at several universities, including ETH Zurich, the University of Technology Sydney, Cornell, and Princeton. She currently teaches at McGill University’s Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture.