Summary

How were educational spaces constructed at the end of the Portuguese colonial period in Macau? How was the discipline of architecture used to establish proximity with cultures that the Portuguese considered ‘autonomous and closed’? How did modern Western languages become inclusive through ‘detail’ and ‘multiple codes’ (Colquhoun, 1991)? What role did Macanese workers play in this process? This article examines two schools: the Pedro Nolasco Commercial School, designed in 1962 by Raúl Chorão Ramalho (1914–2002), and the Infante D. Henrique National High School, designed in 1956 by the Overseas Urbanisation Office. The contrast between the two buildings reveals the ‘linguistic evolution’ of teaching programmes within colonial agencies.

The Commercial School is considered a milestone in the ‘creolisation’ (‘patuá’) of architecture in the territory, combining Eastern references with Portuguese identity elements. This contrasted with the monumentalised, historicist composition of the Lyceum, which supposedly embodied the “anti-modern” character of the metropolitan agency. In 1989, the old high school was demolished without protest. However, Chorão Ramalho’s building survived threats of destruction thanks to interventions by Carlos Marreiros (1999) and Rui Leão and Carlotta Bruni (‘Reading Room’, 2008).

This text questions the stylistic differences between the two schools, arguing that it was Chorão Ramalho’s modernist approach that ensured the building’s preservation. It examines the Commercial School in terms of the composition of the construction teams to illustrate how its materiality also depended on the workforce. The aim is to describe the building’s quality as a shared action between the various players on the construction site, from architects to labourers and workers. Finally, it considers whether the building’s familiarity to the Macanese community, due to the presence of these latter construction agents, played a role.

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