CROSSED VISIONS: AN ARCHITECTURE LAB BETWEEN GLOBAL AND LOCAL

Ana Tostões

President docomomo International and Full Professor at IST – Instituto Superior Técnico de Lisboa

To cite this paper: TOSTOES, Ana – Intersected Visions. An Architecture Lab between Glocal and Local Estudo Prévio 9. Lisboa: CEACT/UAL – Centro de Estudos de Arquitetura, Cidade e Território da Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, 2016. ISSN: 2182-4339 [Available at: www.estudoprevio.net]

Creative Commons, licença CC BY-4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Abstract

Reception and interpretation of architecture from the Modernist Movement today involves its physical, conceptual and identity preservation. When we discuss colonial Africa, the paradox derives from the fact that architecture during the Modernist Movement already included an ideological affirmation of freedom and democratic values, since, as Udo Kultermann (1927-2013) stated, “arquitetura do Movimento Moderno fazia parte da ideologia colonial, na medida em que serviu exclusivamente a minoria branca”1. The issue is to understand how this modern expression could also be a means of colonization and domination. As Anatole Kopp advocated, modern architecture is not aesthetics but a proposal of a better way of life for all2. We are aware that we live in a post-colonial world. In other words, we are former colonies or colonizing countries in a post-colonial era. I believe that the most interesting approach to the issue is through analysis of concepts such as identity, memory and exchange3. Portugal kept the colonial regime until the mid-1970s. The colonial past is perhaps rather recent and too close for critical and historical analysis. That is probably why, in terms of literature, the experience of modern architecture in Portuguese colonies is now starting to be discussed outside the country4.

Keywords: “roças” São Tomé and Príncipe, Lusophone, architecture, heritage

A colonial laboratory

Reception and interpretation of architecture from the Modernist Movement today involves its physical, conceptual and identity preservation. When we discuss colonial Africa, the paradox derives from the fact that architecture during the Modernist Movement already included an ideological affirmation of freedom and democratic values, since, as Udo Kultermann (1927-2013) stated, “arquitetura do Movimento Moderno fazia parte da ideologia colonial, na medida em que serviu exclusivamente a minoria branca”1. The issue is to understand how this modern expression could also be a means of colonization and domination. As Anatole Kopp advocated, modern architecture is not aesthetics but a proposal of a better way of life for all2. We are aware that we live in a post-colonial world. In other words, we are former colonies or colonizing countries in a post-colonial era. I believe that the most interesting approach to the issue is through analysis of concepts such as identity, memory and exchange3. Portugal kept the colonial regime until the mid-1970s. The colonial past is perhaps rather recent and too close for critical and historical analysis. That is probably why, in terms of literature, the experience of modern architecture in Portuguese colonies is now starting to be discussed outside the country4.

In fact, the formal, technological and ideological assumptions of the Modernist Movement are evidenced in constructions in Lusophone Africa at the end of the 1940s. Personifying freedom and symbolizing hope in a democratic future, modernist architecture was viewed as a means to fight the totalitarian regime of Salazar’s Estado Novo. The link between architecture and revolution became an evidence and an affirmation of modernist architecture recognized by many Portuguese architects in the 19485 Congress and became a political objective aimed not only at solving the issue of housing as well as in terms of its application to urban planning and design.

This modern cycle took place in a context of a highly controversial international politics, which began with the foundation of the United Nations in 1945, was reinforced after 1961 and the breaking out of the Colonial War (1961-1974), as well as the late industrialization process of the country and the colonies within four consecutive Development Plans. As Udo Kultermann stated“os acontecimentos que sucedem a guerra, e sobretudo a fundação das Nações Unidas em 1945, tiveram uma intensa reverberação na mudança de estatuto de diversas partes de África. Entre os que se bateram pela liberdade estavam Kwame Nkrumah no Ghanda, Leopold Senghor (1906-2001) no Senegal e Julius Nyerere (1922-1999) na África Oriental. A Guerra Fria que se seguiu teve o maior impacto na independência dos estados africano das leis coloniais. A Líbia conseguiu a indepêndência em 1952, o Ghana em 1957 e em rápida sucessão diversos outros estados africanos, como a Costa do Marfim, a República Centro- Africana, a Nigéria, o Congo, o Gabão, a Mauritânia e o Senegal, conquistaram a independência no ano de 1960, um ano muito importante para a África em geral”6. After WWII, Portuguese colonial policy should be understood under the intense pressure of the United Nations. In the 1950s, so as to alleviate the criticism, the Portuguese dictatorship tried to create an idea of Lusophone identity through using the reference speech by Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) on “luso- tropicalism”.

In the Portuguese colonies, emphasis was given to huge infrastructures from a modern perspective with a Brazilian influence following the publication of Brazil Builds (1943) and the wide dissemination of South-American works7. Throughout the 1950s, many architects who firmly believed in the changing power of architecture travelled to the African colonies where architectural discourse was freer than in continental Portugal. The geographical and climate specificities of Africa led to different meanings of modern vocabulary, which acquired both new phrasing and scale8. The further these territories were from the centre of power, the more available they were to change. In an apparently less restrictive society, architects shared the possibility of building based on the universal character of modern ideas.

This period posed an extraordinary challenge to the “African generation” 9, who not only had the chance to work according to a progressive, egalitarian and universal modern discourse as well as was involved in large-scale construction commissions. Moreover, fostered by the vastness of the African landscape, these architects were allowed to believe they were building a new place, a new world that would fulfill their claims and would lead them to modernity. They created a modern utopia in Africa. There was a sense of freedom and the possibility to experiment in architecture. If “África era o paraíso dos arquitetos”10, the truth is that many of those who went to Africa to work were “bons missionários”11(initially to support colonial welfare and later to support new independent nations in the name of human development and justice) who shared the ideals of the Modernist Movement.

Angola, Vasco Vieira da Costa and Fernando Simões de Carvalho: a Corbusian reading

The influence of LeCorbusier was decisive for the group which would be called the “African generation”12, especially the generation that worked in Angola, namely architect Vasco Vieira da Costa, who was a trainee at the architecture office in Rue de Sèvres in Paris and who presented a study on a Satellite City in Luanda. In that text, Vasco Vieira da Costa describes his awareness regarding the civilizing potential of the “democratic” and changing ideology of Modernist architecture: “compete, pois, ao europeu criar no indígena necessidades de conforto e de uma vida mais elevada, impelindo-o assim ao trabalho que o levará a fixar-se, e o que facilitará a mão-de-obra mais estável. A orientação das habitações e a localização dos bairros indígenas são os dois grandes elementos que devem reger a composição do plano de uma cidade colonial”13.

Vasco Vieira da Costa’s approach was creative and original, using the limitations imposed by the place and the climate as challenges to a technically effective and aesthetically innovative response, thus leaving a modern and unique legacy. Following the principles of design for a tropical climate based on the idea that effective ventilation is essential for comfort, Vasco Vieira da Costa aimed to consider the wind factor, “implantar a construção de acordo com os ventos dominantes”, and blend it with the demands of reducing direct sun incidence on the building’s surfaces. Struggling to avoid the use of air conditioning, Vasco Vieira da Costa advocated that appropriate shadowing and ventilation ensured the most comfortable living conditions. By paying close attentions to solar protection, natural ventilation and rain water drains, he created passive control systems designed to ensure environmental efficiency and being the creative bases for his expressive design of, among others, the Mutamba building (1968) or the Secil tower (1960).

The Servidores do Estado building (1965) is another reference building, in which the low-cost construction restraint implied imaginative solutions and design precision underlying construction accuracy and an approach to “dry construction” based on construction with concrete surfaces together with wood without resorting to mortar. At Huambo Veterinary Faculty (1970), the extensive roofs, the horizontal arrangement of volumes together with the roughness of the texture of the materials used contribute to integrating the building in its surroundings and the landscape. The use of concrete or brick surfaces or, in other cases, to grids of concrete often determine the image of the construction, clearly evidencing its structure by means of blending design and materials, exploiting their primal nature, in accordance with the principles of the concept of “New Brutalism” by Reyner Banham (1922-1988) in 1955. The reference to Le Corbusier’s béton brut is mixed with the influence of British architecture of the last CIAM, namely when he designs long distribution galleries in the State Servants area, in a clear allusion to the sky streets in Alison (1928-1993) and Peter Smithson’s (1923-2003) work. In the long building of the Ministry of Agriculture, the same concerns are evidenced, in this case applied to high standard construction for high class population and in which the solutions regarding distribution of apartments in galleries are maintained though larger and more refined. The headquarters of the association Associação dos Naturais de Angola (Anangola building) (1963), in Luanda, Vasco Vieira da Costa takes on modern monumental approach able to represent collective equipment with an iconic meaning, ideas that are made more manifest in the outstanding set of buildings in Largo da Mutamba (current headquarters of the Angolan Ministry of Urban Planning and Public Work). Other authors will develop similar solutions using climate control devices, distribution grids and galleries, as, for example, José Pinto da Cunha (1921-1985) in the Cirillo & Irmão building or the Castilho brother in Coqueiros. The ideal of a life outdoors becomes an architectural program, together with a design that includes large community spaces, sometimes making these transitional places imposing, as they would be designed in the 1960s, within the framework of an exceptionally qualified architecture.

These buildings are still inhabited but their future is threatened. In fact, Luanda is currently a city that is changing at an unthinkable pace. Besides the traces left by the war which broke out after the independence and was resolved a few years ago, besides the overpopulation, Luanda is in constant change. In this new period of peace, growing investment is being made both in infrastructures and in the urban planning based on densification, on occupation of public spaces. The refurbishing of many of these buildings has not been considered.

Mozambique, towards the Indian Ocean: Pancho and the Beira group

In Mozambique, in particular in Maputo, similar devices were developed. TAP- Montepio building in Mozambique, designed by Alberto Soeiro (1917-) and built downtown near the Cathedral and City Hall, is probably the most striking example. Responding to the desire for monumental construction present in Plano Aguiar, giving downtown a symbolic and material central stage, this building embodies modernity, as it blends extensive ground floor for services and shops and tall and geometrical volume for houses. Built in a duplex apartment system, access is made via two suspended and open galleries that run through both sides of the housing blocks and which mark the façades and the colonial hierarchies. The corner position and the central location are urban qualities enhanced by the large yard with a gate over the ground floor and its huge columns and the ceramic façade facing the avenue.

Pancho Guedes14, a Portuguese-African architect (Witwatersrand university, 1953) opts for an innovative approach, detached from the canon of the Modernist Movement. His activity in Mozambique (a Portuguese colony until 1975) dates from the 1950s. His contribution to the reanalysis of architectural modernity is mostly due to his writings, and to his works blending different fields and cultures and creating a link with other artists, namely with the painter Malangatana Ngwenya (1936-2009). His magical and fantastic architecture is the result of the contact with an international network he created of artists and thinkers from several backgrounds and perspectives: architects from the Modernist Movement, namely the contributions of South African Rex Martienssenou, to the Brazilian influence of Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012); from the critical objections of CIAM within the framework of Team 10 (he was a member of), to the meeting at Royaumont with the Smithsons, Aldo Van Eyck (1918-1999), Georges Candilis (1913-1995) and Giancarlodi Carlo (1919-2005); from Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) to Dadaism; from the creative power of Frank Lloyd Wright to new African artists he promoted.

Besides being the great architect of Mozambique, Pancho Guedes had a knack for finding talent, promoting creativity, as well as the ability to create a chain of creators15 with him as mediator between art and architecture. In Maputo, Pancho Guedes became very close to Malangatana, the Surrealist painter poet whose inventive spirit knew no limit16. Convener of the supernatural, Malangatana fostered Pancho’s desire to “ouvir as vozes que nos falam do outro lado dos sonhos”17. Pancho knew that, in the 1950s, in apartheid Africa, between Mozambique and South Africa, the need existed for “uma civilização autêntica e crua”18. Therefore, he aimed for an architecture with meaning and with a personal dimension based on research on shapes and architectural elements incorporating narrative and conveying emotion: “Clamo para os arquitetos os direitos e as liberdades que os pintores e poetas há tanto têm”19. Pancho wanted to take advantage of native universal motifs and mix them with a sophisticated architectural culture and, in his buildings, create environments similar to the paintings of Chirico (1888-1978). Pancho knew architecture is not understood as an intellectual experience but as feeling, as emotion20. He thus aimed to find that quality “há muito perdida entre os arquitetos que resulta numa arquitetura espontânea de intensidade mágica”21.

This search derived from the desire to create a modern alternative to the mechanical International Style increasingly more popular in Africa in the 1950s22. Unlike most architects working in Africa who struggled to design considering the climate, Pancho aims to be able to create fostered by the sensuality and the drama of African culture.

This aim to find an alternative modernity is a response to inner desires, as well as to an Africa awakening to contemporariness, to a new bubbling world23. Pancho was both a spectator and an actor of a time in which architecture embraces popular culture, in which architecture without architects or fantasy architecture were acknowledged24. It is also the moment of complex and multiple pathways towards either continuity or crisis in the Modernist Movement25 that Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968) described as resulting from the open equation between reason and emotion26.

Pancho arranged the conditions needed to make his own alternative path. Besides his enormous talent, knowledge, experimentalist drive and genuine curiosity, he also combined two conditions he was able to make use of: his life in Africa allowed him to be far away, both geographically and symbolically, from Eurocentric cultural centres, as he lived in a colony that, similarly to the metropolis, was behind the times. On the other hand, he lived in a period when emancipation movements became more intense, i.e., he was living at a place where “tudo parecia possível”27.

Lourenço Marques was, in the early 1960s and before the wave of arrests that took place when the liberation war broke out, a dynamic city and perhaps even one of the cultural capitals of Africa, partly because of Pancho’s international contacts in areas such as architecture and visual arts, since production in Portuguese language were either lacking or not disseminated28.

From Maputo, Pancho Guedes creates a network with African, American and European creators that will allow him to boldly present himself in the International Biennial of Art in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1961, as the individual delegate of a country called Mozambique, a representation made official via the Mozambican Centre for Tourism and Information.

As he stated: “Durante os anos 50 e 60 havia qualquer coisa de agitado e extraordinário naquela lindíssima cidade que os portugueses tinham feito em menos de cinquenta anos a que chamavam Lourenço Marques […] Em Moçambique vivia-se num mundo fechado e ideal em que do Império só havia boas notícias, inaugurações e discursos. Era um mundo de boatos, segredos, novidades de café e de uma teia sempre crescente de informadores e agentes – mas onde apesar de tudo, tudo parecia possível”29.

1960 was the year of all discoveries. It is in “o annus mirabilis MCMLX”30, on a tour around Europe, that he meets Alison and Peter Smithson in London, visits the works by Fernando Távora (1923-2005) and António Siza Vieira in Porto, meets the editors of Architectural Design in London and prepares the way for his first international publications in reference journals: Architectural Review in 1961, in a review signed by South African architect Julian Beinart (1932-), after meetings with Reyner Banham and James Maude Richards (1907-1992) that writes about him inTIMES31. Pancho Guedes is definitely on his way to becoming an international figure. The following year he is invited to participate in the meeting at Royaumont Abbey, when he becomes a member of Team 10. His participation in the French scenario occurs via the reference journal L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, in which he introduced himself with the text “Y Aura- t-il une Architecture? – OeuvresetProjets” in an issue devoted to the theme “Fantastic Architectures”32, after the exhibition on “Visionary Architecture” at MoMA in 196033. Afterwards, his collaboration with World Architecture published by John Donat in London as Mozambique contributing editor, mentions A.D.A.34 Pancho Guedes as an author in the 1964, 1965 and 1967 issues. At the same time, he became known as an architect, a sponsor and a promoter of African art. In Paris, with the publication of Pancho Guedes’s article “Les Mapogga”, on the painted houses of the Ndebele, in South Africa, the cover of the journal directed by André Bloc (1896-1966), Aujourd’hui: Art et Architecture35.

In 1961, the most relevant event is the 1st International Congress on African Culture, organized by Frank McEwen36 to discuss the aesthetics of African contemporary art, held at The Salisbury National Gallery, Rhodesia (today Harare, in Zimbabwe) between 1 and 11 August. Thirty-seven delegates participated in this highly important event: Alfred Barr, from the New York Museum of Modern Art; William Fagg (1914-1992), from the British Museum; Jean Laude (1922-1984), from the Sorbonne; Roland Penrose (1900-1984), surrealist painter and president of Institute of Contemporary Art, ICA, in London, accompanied by photographer Lee Miller (1907-1977); James Porter (1905- 1970), from Howard University, Washington; Udo Kultermann, who, as we have seen, would become responsible for the study and dissemination of Modern architecture in Africa; Dada poet Tristan Tzara; John Russel (1919-2008), then The Sunday Times37 critic; Hugh Tracey (1903-1977), South African musicologist, and historian and vice-chancellor of Ife University, Saburi Biobaku (1918-2001), who opened the conference38.

Pancho Guedes is one of the delegates. His presentation entitled “As coisas não são o que parecem ser – a hora autobiofársica”39 focused on his own work as an architect and as an artist in Africa under Dada complicity of Tristan Tzara who acknowledged “ter que ir ao fim do mundo”. For John Russell, “ele pôs o Congresso aos seus pés com um deslumbrante (dazzling) e poético relato sobre como a fantasia tem de ser devolvida à arquitetura em África. Senti que tinha apreendido a mesma essência da cultura africana que Picasso antes dele, mas de modo mais intenso; com simplicidade cativante, humor, ele faz acreditar que tudo isso é parte da arte e da vida africana”40.

Identifying Lourenço Marques as one of the centres of change in Africa despite the colonial history and the expectations regarding the visit of Rear Admiral Manuel Sarmento Rodrigues as governor-general of Mozambique from 1961 to 1964, when he was dismissed by Salazar, is based on two documented cornerstones: the fact that Pancho Guedes became a famous architect due to his work in Mozambique, and his influence as a patron of African art where it is sought, discussed and disseminated; the fact that painter Malangatana rapidly became known at international level, which allowed both his success and the success of new African art based on its specificities in terms of location and culture.

In the field of architecture, we must refer that by the end of the decade, most essential work in the “Guedes Style” in Maputo had been built, such as the buildings Prometheus (1951-1953), O Leão que Ri (1954-1955), Casa Avião (1951), Casa das Três Girafas, Casas Gémeas Matos Ribeiro (1952), Padaria Saipal (1954), Garagem Otto Barbosa (1952), Restaurante Zambi (1955), etc., and, a design project since 1951, Hotel em São Martinho de Bilene. In O Leão que Ri, his most famous building, Pancho Guedes combines his will to create African modernity with Surrealism, Expressionism, his sculptural ambition and his ability to transform dreams and visions into space. This residential building has a gallery in the back, three apartments on each floor, is suspended and the ground floor features sculptural modellations. In the Abreu Santos & Rocha building (1953-1956), in downtown Maputo, sculpture is manipulated via textures and materials made of actual primitive materials turned into figures that seem to tell a story.

From technical issues to poetic approaches, pop art and African art, Pancho fostered the possibility of modernity through a complex process which includes diverse cultural sources. Pancho freed himself of colonial hegemony and combined cultural motifs and influences of the city of Lourenço Marques in 1950 and early 196041. Pancho thus promoted the success of a new African art rooted in its specific cultural and local traditions. Also due to him having created close bonds with the local population, Africa was a fertile ground for Pancho’s projects. Famous for his wild imagination, each of his projects is a response to the context, the climate, the geology and the culture of its users. Pancho even anticipated trends and ways of thinking that are still being discovered internationally in terms of the relations between art and architecture.

New Directions in African architecture42, cultural heritage and the proof of time

In 2008, the implosion of Kinaxixe market (1950-1952), designed by Vasco Vieira da Costa and built in Luanda in the early 1950s, starts the debate on modern African heritage, not only from an historical perspective but also because this modern heritage may be seen as a cultural asset integrating climate adapted devices. Today, this heritage is starting to be assimilated by the younger population and some iconic housing buildings have recently been acknowledged as monuments. This assumption has prevented their demolition and replacement for recent International style buildings with window curtains requiring the use of expensive mechanical devices for temperature balance, defy sustainability and responsible energy performance.

The shadowing and ventilation systems of modern and pre-modern architecture, which were more or less efficiently used in Angola and Mozambique, resorted to natural and sustainable processes. However, they were linked to a rather passive development logic which has increasingly been questioned.

Several authors claim that post-war internationalist architecture was no more than a formalist and material interpretation of original models43. Perhaps that is why the works built in Angola and Mozambique have not been widely disseminated.

These works are a small example of the potential of modern architectural production in Angola and Mozambique evidenced in the iconic, tectonic and discourse qualities of this unique legacy. Though Pancho Guedes’ legacy is now starting to become known as a cultural heritage in Mozambique, and Vasco Vieira da Costa a reference in Angolan heritage, the fact is that this fantastic heritage is threatened by the lack of legal protection. Yet, even considering the weaknesses of 50-year-old constructions with little maintenance, these buildings and cities evidence surprising resilience. Perhaps the fact that Modernist architecture was designed with great consistency, climate concerns and spatial and tectonic dignity justify the buildings’ standing the test of time. It is important to understand this production as a change process taking into consideration a progressive perspective and the cultural dissemination of these pioneering works with both a social and an urban meaning.

This heritage leads us to consider its validity and future usefulness. What I would like to question is: What is the meaning of this heritage today? What meaning could be given to this heritage? In a framework of this threshold of poverty, is their maintenance sustainable?

Is the aim to preserve linked to the desire to build memory museums, works of art, or because we want to find a future for these works, places and cities that are still alive, i.e., that have not lost their meaning yet? But how should we act in extreme contexts in which resources must be balanced and modern heritage is seen as a symbol of colonial power?

I believe that heritage involves a collective sense of belonging and I would like to recall the Utopian perspective regarding the role of architecture in the Modern Movement, which aims to improve everyone’s lives; I believe this heritage may become a cultural and economically sustainable resource. 44

Notes

1 Udo Kultermann, Kenneth Frampton, World Architecture 1900-2000: A Critical Mosaic. Central and Southern Africa, Vol. 6, NewYork, Springer-Verlag Wien, 2000, p. XXII.
2 Anatole Kopp, Quandle Moderne n’était Pasun Style mais une Cause, Paris, ENSBA, 1988. See Ana Tostões (coord.), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Os Edifícios, Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2006.

3 Isabel Carlos (ed.), Exchanging Visions, Lisboa, Instituto Camões Autores e Artistas, 2007.
4 Madalena Cunha Matos, “Colonial Architecture and Amnesia Mapping the Work of Portuguese Architects in Angola and Mozambique”, OASE – “L’Afrique, c’est Chic. Architecture and Planning in Africa 1950-1970”, n.o 82, NAi Publishers, 2010.
5The first National Architecture Congress (Congresso Nacional de Arquitectura), held in May 1948 in Lisbon, had significant influence in the affirmation of modern architecture in Portugal with consequences in terms of understanding 1950s architectural production, which should be discussed and analyzed in the context of the cultural turmoil after the end of the war, see Ana Tostões, Os Verdes Anos na Arquitectura Portuguesa dos Anos 50, op. cit., 50. At the moment that freedom of speech was available for architects to regain and that they were given space to affirm that modern architecture was inevitable, architects claim for industrialization and its participation in solving housing problems without style restrictions or obligations. They claim intervention at a scale different from the isolated building, i.e., the right to intervene in the city. Le Corbusier and the utopia of his Ville Radieuse have been referred to. The Athens Charter is recurrently mentioned as urban dogma to position the urgency of new urban and architectural as a manifesto, see Ana Tostões, Cultura e Tecnologia na Arquitectura Moderna Portuguesa, Porto, FAUP, 2014, p. 369.
João Simões, José Huertas Lobo, Francisco Castro Rodrigues, “O alojamento colectivo” in Ana Tostões (coord.), 1o Congresso Nacional de Arquitectura, Teses, Lisboa, Ordem dos Arquitectos, 2008 [1948].
6 Udo Kultermann, Kenneth Frampton, op. cit., 23 (free translation).
7 Philip Goodwin, Kidder Smith, Brazil Builds, Architecture Old and New, New York, MoMA, 1943. Below are the monographs on this theme: L’architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 13-14, setembro 1947; L’architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 42-43, August 1952.
8 Ana Tostões, Os Verdes Anos na Arquitectura Portuguesa dos Anos 50, Porto, FAUP, 1997.
9 José Manuel Fernandes, Geração Africana. Arquitectura e cidades em Angola e Moçambique, 1925-1975, Lisboa, Livros Horizonte, 2002.
10 John Goodwin, “Architecture and Construction Technology in West África”, Docomomo Journal, Modern Heritage in Africa, 2005.
11 Antoni Folkers, Modern Architecture in Africa, Amsterdam, Sun, 2010,163.
12 José Manuel Fernandes, op. cit.
13 Vasco Vieira da Costa, Cidade satélite n.o 3. Concurso para a Obtenção do Diploma de Arquitecto, Porto, ESBAP, 1984.
14 Pancho Guedes’s full name: Amâncio d’Alpoim Miranda Guedes; the variations to his name are: Amâncio Guedes, Pancho Guedes, A. Miranda Guedes, A. de Alpoim Guedes, Amâncio D’Alpoim Guedes, Amâncio de Miranda Guedes.
15 Malangatana Ngwenya, “Pancho Guedes Visto por Malangatana”, Savana, 5 March 2010.
16 Dorothy Guedes, “Vinte e Quatro Poemas de Malangatana”, in Malangatana Ngwenya, Vinte e Quatro Poemas, Lisboa, ISPA, 1996, 7.
17 Pancho Guedes, Manifestos, Ensaios, Falas, Publicações, Leituras, Publicações, Lisboa, Ordem dos Arquitectos, 2007, 55.

18 Amâncio Guedes, “Tito Zungu. O Mestre do Envelope Decorado”, in Pancho Guedes, op.cit., 111.
19 Amâncio Guedes, “Uma Tese Wrigthiana dos Anos Cinquenta”, in Pancho Guedes, op.cit., 12.

20 Bernard Huet, introduction to: Amâncio Guedes, “Y aura-t-il une architecture?”, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, n.o 102, 1962, 42.
21 Pancho Guedes, “Uma Tese Wrightiana”, in Pancho Guedes, Manifestos, Ensaios, Falas, Publicações, op. cit., 7.

22 See Pancho Guedes: “Para alguns, o Movimento Moderno cumpriu o seu programa e a arquitectura hoje viveu um tempo de subtilezas e classicismo. Por certo, o cancro dos estilos está outra vez connosco – mais mortal e aterrorizante do que nunca. Para outros – nós que em cada dia fitamos a solidão na cara – sabemos que continuaremos marginais ou então viraremos nossos próprios traidores”, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui,n.o 102, 1962, 42-48.

23 Tristan Tzara, “Introduction to Guedes’ lecture”, A. D’AlpoimGuedes, “Things Are Not What They Seemed To Be”, Proceedings of the First International Congress in African Culture held at the National Gallery, Salisbury, Rhodesia, 1-11 August 1962.
24 Exhibition at MoMA in 1960 “Arquitectura Visionária”, Bernard Rudofsky (1905- 1988),“Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture” (1964), “Architectural History, as written and taught in the Western World , has never been concerned with more than a few select cultures.”

25 Ernesto Nathan Rogers, “Continuità o Crisi”, Casabella, n.125, April-May 1957.
26 Sigfried Giedion, Space Time and Architecture.The Growth of a new Tradition, Massachusetts, Harvard, 1941.
27 Amâncio d’Alpoim Guedes, “Lembrança do pintor Malangatana Valente Ngwenya quando ainda jovem”, in Júlio Navarro, Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, Lisboa, Caminho, 1998, 9.
28 Alexandre Pomar, “There were a lot of people hovering around”, in Alexandre Pomar (ed.), op. cit., 40.
29 Amâncio d’Alpoim Guedes, “Lembrança do pintor Malangatana Valente Ngwenya quando ainda jovem”, in Júlio Navarro, Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, op. cit., 9.
30 Miguel Santiago, Pancho Guedes – Metamorfoses Espaciais, Lisboa, Caleidoscópio, 2007.
31 Julian Beinart, “AmâncioGuedes, architect of Lourenço Marques”, Architectural Review, 770, April 1961, 240-251; James Maude Richards, “Emergence of a new and original figure: remarkable work by AmâncioGuedes”, The Times, May, 1961. See João Paulo Martins, “A Difícil Internacionalização”, in Ana Tostões, (ed.), Arquitectura Moderna Portuguesa, Lisboa, IPPAR, 2004, 166.
32 AmâncioGuedes, “Y aura-t-ilune architecture?”, op. cit. The issue on “Arquitecturas Fantásticas” (Fantastic Architectures), edited by Bernard Huet, includes outsiders such as Facteur Cheval, modern leaders such as Erich Mendelsohn, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, the visionaries such as Antoni Gaudí and Utopians such as Pascal Hauserman (1936-2011), Bruce Goff (1904-1982), Paolo Soleri (1919-2013)).
33 The international success led to a small reference in the journal Arquitectura, n.o 79, July 1963: “Miranda Guedes: arquitecto de Lourenço Marques”.
34 Amâncio de Alpoim.
35 Amâncio de Alpoim Guedes, “Les Mapogga”, Aujourd’hui: Art et Architecture,n.37, June 1962, 58-65. It was not exactly a discovery but the publication is considered pioneer – “o primeiro a sublinhar o formalismo arquitectural e escultural das habitações” See Giovanni Fontana Antonnelli, “Inventer une NouvelleIllusion: Le Cas Renommédes Southern Ndebele”, available at:
http://www.international.icomos.org/victoriafalls2003/papers.htm – further developed by other authors, Elizabeth Schneider and Peter Rich.
36 Frank McEwen (1907-1994), British artist, active in the Parisian avant-gard of the 1930s. He became a British Council delegate in Paris and was the first director of the Rhodes National Gallery in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), between 1956 and 1973, where he founded an informal school-workshop and the Shona sculpture movement. in Alexandre Pomar (ed.), op. cit.

37 The Sunday Times, 12 August 1962.
38 Ford Foundation was the main sponsor. The second Congress was immediately announced for Rio de Janeiro in 1964, in a biennial organization planned by the Congress for Freedom and Culture, which also supported the journal BlackOrpheus. The geo-strategical context was that of the Cold War and, in 1967, the fact that America financed several initiatives through CIA would allow for several relevant actions.
39 Pancho Guedes, Manifestos, Ensaios, Falas, Publicações, Leituras, Publicações, op. cit.
40 In Gallery, Harare, ed. Gallery Delta, n.o 15, March 1998, 20-23
41 Pedro Gadanho (ed.), op cit.
42 Udo Kultermann, New Directions in Africa Architecture, New York, George Braziller, 1969.
43 Antoni Folkers, Modern Architecture in Africa, op. cit., 166.
44 Ana Tostões, Arquitectura Moderna em África: Angola e Moçambique, Lisboa, Caleidoscópio, 2014.

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Arménio Losa e Cassiano Barbosa, Fábrica de Cerâmica Monteiro&Giro, Quelimane, Moçambique, 1958-1961 .© Ana Tostões, 2010

Anúncio ao edifício que irá ser construído no lugar do Mercado do Kinaxixe, demolido (Vasco Vieira da Costa, 1950-1952). © Ana Tostões, 2011