Summary

The discipline of architecture, when dealing with Public Works associated with colonialism and territorial occupation, still focuses on the analysis of the constitution of the design teams, of the colonial Public Works (CPW) offices, of the architects and engineers themselves. This focus on the “designing elite” misses a critical input to these Public Works, namely the labour force responsible for realising these structures. As such, critical questions about the labour force engaged in the spatialization of architectural plans are still missing: who were those workers? What ethnic groups did they come from? How did they emerge in contingents that could aggregate a few thousand individuals? What was their recruitment like? What expectations did they have? How were they paid? What training did they receive? What repercussions did these (often compulsory) work experiences have? What conflicts did they provoke in colonial societies? How did they resist recruitment? How did they collaborate? How to deal with this legacy?

Among other milestones and outcomes, ArchLabour will create and promote an online database to make research material and resources available. One of ArchLabour’s main goals is to collect and co-produce information about architectural culture, particularly CPW, and share and discuss it with the community. The database will follow a dynamic structure to engage both ArchLabour researchers and different users who may register, including other scholars interested in similar topics and anonymous persons with experiences linked to colonial construction, territorial infrastructure and urbanization. The platform will be used to share information (personal archives, photographs, video, audio and written testimonies) and it is expected to become a long-term tool of wide-ranging resources to facilitate discussion between scholars, experts, agents and users.