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  • [CALL FOR ABSTRACTS] Displacing the Drafting Board: Women, Labor, and the Construction Site

    [CALL FOR ABSTRACTS] Displacing the Drafting Board: Women, Labor, and the Construction Site

    Panel

    Displacing the Drafting Board: Women, Labor, and the Construction Site

    Event: Society of Architectural Historians 2027 Annual International Conference
    Chairs: Ana Vaz Milheiro, Francesca Vita
    Date: 14 – 18 April 2026

    Location: Chicago, Illinois

    Summary

    Architectural historiography has addressed women’s agency in architecture through two predominant, yet often isolated, approaches. On the one hand, it has relied on biographical methodologies that highlight leading figures as designers and decision-makers who stood out in the conception of buildings and infrastructure, following the pioneering work of Susana Torre (1977). On the other hand, scholars have sought to recognize the collective role of women as part of the labor force, often categorized as unskilled workers within contexts of precarity (Jha, 2020; Melsens, 2024 Milheiro, 2025). Based on this dual approach, this session focuses on the construction site as the central stage for expanding women’s role in architecture, metaphorically shifting the drafting board to the place where the project is actual built. The aim of this session is to interrogate the physical and social dimension of architectural construction not merely as a site for project execution, but as an ecosystem where diverse forms of female agency also existed. We are looking for papers that intersect biographical histories of women – ranging from designers, work yard supervisor, craftswoman, and others who possessed technical or vocational training and earned wages (Kleinöder, 2022) – with construction sites. By investigating these professional and labor trajectories within the construction site, this session seeks to question: In what ways did the physical presence of women on-site alter construction dynamics and the material culture of architecture? How did gender shape technical authority across different geographical and chronological contexts, with particular emphasis on the 18th, 19th, 20th century?

    By combining archival material and oral history, this session seeks to expand the historiographical canon by recognizing the construction site as a space of social negotiation where intellectual and manual labor meet, thereby revealing the complexity of women’s participation in the materialization of the built environment.

    Click here to submit your proposal

  • Concrete Colonialism: Material Power and Non-human Agency in Angola and Mozambique

    Concrete Colonialism: Material Power and Non-human Agency in Angola and Mozambique

    Communication

    Concrete Colonialism: Material Power and Non-human Agency in Angola and Mozambique

    Event: VII CHAM Conference: On the Move
    Authors: Beatriz Serrazina, Francesca Vita
    Date: 15 – 18 April 2026

    Location: Colégio Almada Negreiros, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa

    Mabubas Dam, Upstream and downstream views of the spillway, 1951
    [AHU, OP5602]
    Cabora Bassa, Construction site with cement and aggregate silos in the foreground [ANTT, 010/0027/00027]

    Summary

    This paper explores the role of concrete as a central nonhuman actor in the construction of the Mabubas Dam (Angola, 1948–1956) and the Cahora Bassa Dam (Mozambique, 1969–1974), two of the most ambitious infrastructural projects undertaken during Portuguese colonial rule in Africa. Far from being a passive material, concrete actively shaped the colonial built environment through its circulation, adaptation, and resistance. Drawing on colonial engineering reports and construction site photographs, the paper argues that the mobilities and immobilities of concrete – its extraction, transport, building techniques and structural limitations – impacted colonial ambitions, dictating where and how power could be spatially imposed, by who or what.

    The dams were not just technical achievements, but also symbols of colonial modernity, progress and imperial permanence. Yet their construction depended on the successful movement and response of concrete across challenging landscapes, labour regimes and other non-human agents, like rivers. In both Angola and Mozambique, concrete had to be localised and moulded – to climatic conditions, terrain, and available raw materials – demonstrating its active role in shaping every stage of the building process from conception to construction. These processes reveal how concrete connected colonial building sites through standardised technologies, not just as a medium but also as a co-author of form and temporality, while also producing uneven landscapes of extraction and labour exploitation.

    This paper places material infrastructure at the centre of (trans)colonial negotiations, emphasising the agency of concrete within a shared imperial framework. It discusses how the materiality and limitations of concrete reflected and enacted various dynamics of power, construction skills and design practices throughout the Portuguese empire in Africa. In doing so, it aims to contribute to ongoing discussions on non-human actors in architectural history.

    [Panel 20: Nonhumans Mobilities and Immobilities in the Colonial Built Environment, organized by Alice Santiago Faria].

  • Fragmentos de resistência. Uma contranarrativa sobre os aldeamentos estratégicos na Guiné- Bissau (1968-1974)

    Fragmentos de resistência. Uma contranarrativa sobre os aldeamentos estratégicos na Guiné- Bissau (1968-1974)

    Communication

    Fragmentos de resistência. Uma contranarrativa sobre os aldeamentos estratégicos na Guiné-Bissau (1968-1974)

    Event: Workshop “Ditadura, instituições e quotidianos coloniais”
    Authors: Francesca Vita
    Date: 19 – 20 Março 2026

    Location: Universidade de Cabo Verde, Polo 3, Santa Catarina, Cabo Verde

    Saltinho resettled village, close up, GNB
    Strategic villages instructions, 1971

    Summary

    Esta contribuição pretende estudar atos de resistência ativados por parte da população africana durante o programa de aldeamentos estratégicos implementado na fase final da guerra de libertação na Guiné-Bissau (1968-1974). Este programa, promovido a partir de 1968 pelo governador general António de Spínola, fazia parte de uma ampla estratégia de contrassubversão apta a conquistar o apoio da população, especialmente quem vivia em zonas militarmente estratégicas. Através da concentração, deslocação forçada e construção de novas infraestruturas, os aldeamentos estratégicos foram uma experiência disruptiva no modo de vida das populações rurais que foram sujeitas a uma nova organização socio-espacial e económica.

    Esta contribuição propõe discutir uma questão fundamental, até agora abordada apenas marginalmente pela literatura recente: de que forma estas populações reagiram à prática de serem “aldeadas”? Para resgatar a história dos aldeamentos estratégicos a partir da perspetiva das populações que aí viveram, examinam-se documentos visuais e audiovisuais produzidos por órgãos coloniais que retratam aparentemente “a distância” os aldeamentos concretizados. Através destas imagens e do discurso intrínseco a elas que celebra a ordem e o rigor militar do empreendimento, este artigo volta a olhar de perto os aldeamentos estratégicos, identificando fragmentos de resistência que no dia a dia desafiou (e continua a desafiar) as lógicas coloniais. Estes fragmentos são revelados, por exemplo, na forma como as casas-tipo foram adaptadas aos usos tradicionais subvertendo formas e funcionalidades da casa colonial. A análise fotográfica é acompanhada pela revisão de documentos de caráter militar, como as histórias das companhias que operaram no terreno ou os documentos enviados e recebidos pelo próprio Spínola, destacando uma realidade complexa, heterogénea e feita de negociações com as populações rurais e com a morfologia do país, desde as fases de construção. Esta comunicação propõe uma contranarrativa, feitas de fragmentos de pequenas histórias e locais, que contribui para o estudo dos aldeamentos estratégicos na Guiné-Bissau colocando as populações rurais no cerne da análise.

  • Impérios corporativos: As genealogias transnacionais da arquitectura sócio-recreativa no colonialismo português (1930–1970)

    Impérios corporativos: As genealogias transnacionais da arquitectura sócio-recreativa no colonialismo português (1930–1970)

    Communication

    Impérios corporativos:

    As genealogias transnacionais da arquitectura sócio-recreativa no colonialismo português (1930–1970)

    Event: Workshop “Ditadura, instituições e quotidianos coloniais”
    Authors: Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 19 – 20 Março 2026

    Location: Universidade de Cabo Verde, Polo 3, Cabo Verde

    Diamang Main Staff House, Dundo, 1950s [DCV-UC/AD]
    Foyer Social, Kinshasa, Belgian Congo, 1940

    Summary

    As actividades da Diamang na Lunda, no nordeste de Angola, ao longo do século XX, no âmbito do colonialismo português, envolveram não só a extracção de diamantes como também a construção de infraestruturas, habitação e equipamentos colectivos nas mais variadas escalas e programas. Esta apresentação visa a Casa do Pessoal da companhia, criada em 1936 e com sucessivas expansões nas décadas seguintes, explorando as diversas materializações da instituição e respectivos contextos de produção. Organizada como espaço fundamental na ordem social na Diamang, simultaneamente incluindo e separando diferentes grupos sócio-raciais, a Casa do Pessoal revela múltiplas interacções com a população e o seu quotidiano, do planeamento e construção à utilização, adaptação e negociação.

    As dimensões formais e funcionais da arquitectura parecem evidenciar semelhanças que desafiam concepões tipológicas e retóricas das instituições sociais e recreativas que sustentaram ambições políticas de controlo social. Neste sentido, a apresentação propõe uma abordagem cruzada entre a Casa do Pessoal, a Casa do Povo e os Centros Recreativos – instituições planeadas e construídas entre as décadas de 1930 e 1970 em geografias industriais que dialogaram com Diamang, tanto a nível territorial, como do ponto de vista económico e corporativo. A análise sublinha a importância de considerar conexões mais amplas e complexas entre o aparelho do Estado Novo português e a sua dimensão colonial, num campo historiográfico em que as intersecções no eixo metrópole-colónias suscitam ainda importantes questões analíticas, e também com outras geografias próximas, nomeadamente o caso do Congo Belga, desafiando os limites do nacionalismo metodológico. As relações directas com as pretensões sócio-recreativas da FNAT ou as cartilhas laborais belgas, anunciadas pela própria companhia, ou as apropriações formais feitas na Lunda a partir das propostas arquitectónicas para as Casas do Povo em Portugal, no final da década de 1940, indiciam diálogos que complicam genealogias de poder, ordem e contestação.

  • Construction and labour in motion. A methodological approach to film images of colonial infrastructures

    Construction and labour in motion. A methodological approach to film images of colonial infrastructures

    Communication

    Construction and labour in motion. A methodological approach to film images of colonial infrastructures

    Event: Construction History and Films International Symposium
    Authors: Francesca Vita, Beatriz Serrazina, Ana Vaz Milheiro
    Date: 19 – 20 February 2026

    Location: CIUL, Lisbon, Portugal

    “Construction and Labour in motion” presentation, 2026
    Database structure

    Summary

    This paper focuses on the cataloguing, data processing and visualisation of film images for studying construction and labour history during Portuguese colonial rule in Africa. As part of the European-funded project Architecture, Colonialism and Labour (ArchLabour), which examines the impact of labour on colonial architecture, this paper explores how the ArchLabour team has shaped a methodology of visual information management through the creation of a digital database that places film images at the centre of queries on the construction and labour of major colonial infrastructures, including dams, railways, settlements, ports and airports. What methods can be used to trace the multiple dimensions of construction and labour represented in colonial film images? How do tools of data management can assist research on construction history, establishing new relationships between categories and revealing unnoticed aspects of construction? How can data from the visualisation of films help research on construction history and labour?

    The paper discusses the design of a digital database, built from scratch by the ArchLabour team together with a group of visual programming experts, and explores how visual data management can be applied for studying colonial construction and labour. In this light, it contributes with a practical example of film images analysis and proposes operational ways to unveil invisibilities of construction history, subaltern labour, non-human actors and material agency.

  • Colonial Construction Practices in Portuguese News (1960s–1970s)

    Colonial Construction Practices in Portuguese News (1960s–1970s)

    Communication

    Colonial Construction Practices in Portuguese News (1960s–1970s)

    Event: International Symposium Construction History & Film
    Authors: Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 19 – 20 February 2026

    Location: CIUL, Lisbon, Portugal

    Two workers using trowels to plaster a brick wall [Construção civil em Benguela, 1968, RTP Arquivos]
    Team assembling moulds on a viaduct along the Cubal variant construction [Construção do caminho de ferro do Cubal, 1973, RTP Arquivos]

    Summary

    This presentation examines a selection of short documentary films from the archives of RTP (Rádio e Televisão de Portugal), originally broadcasted on the Noticiário Nacional [National News] programme in Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s. Produced during the country’s late colonial period, these black-and-white films – between two to five minutes long – documented construction work in several territories in Africa under Portuguese rule. They covered a variety of contexts, typologies and scales: sanitation projects in Beira, Mozambique, building sites in Luanda, Angola, road construction in São Tomé, railways and bridges, and the monumental hydroelectric dams of Gove, Cambambe, and Cabora Bassa. Unlike written records, which mostly emphasised technical plans and quantitative aspects such as costs or completion deadlines, the moving images reveal the practical, hands-on dimensions of construction and public works, from materials to the coexistence of manual and mechanical work. They capture how infrastructures were assembled, how tools and machinery were handled by workers – frequently absent from technical reports –, and how labour was organised on site. The paper argues that these archival films constitute an invaluable visual archive for rethinking the history of construction and architecture within the context of empire, intersecting multiple dimensions of labour, technology, and material power.

  • Building São Januário Hospital in Macau: Portuguese technical perspectives on Chinese labour

    Building São Januário Hospital in Macau: Portuguese technical perspectives on Chinese labour

    Communication



    Building São Januário Hospital in Macau: Portuguese technical perspectives on Chinese labour

    Journal: : Architecture + Infrastructures Working Paper Series 1: Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: Architecture, Cities and Labour
    Author: Ana Vaz Milheiro
    Print: Dinâmia’CET-Iscte, 2026


    Infirmary: Conditions at São Januário Hospital c. 1951, [José dos Santos Baptista (Head of the Technical Department of Public Works) and Abel de Carvalho (Radiologist)], Study on the Renovation and Expansion of the Conde de São Januário Central Hospital in Macau, 1951. MO/AM/DA/031/1

    Concreting of the 1st Floor. Arnaldo Luiz de Siqueira Basto, RTOPM, 1956 Report (1956). AHU, OP03394. 

    Summary

    The historical context of the Conde de São Januário Central Hospital (CHCSJ) in Macau dates to the 1870s. It began as a military hospital under Portuguese administration. The original structure was later replaced in the 1950s with facilities that complied with the rigorous technical standards required for treating tropical diseases. This construction process aligned with the concept of “welfare colonialism,” as described by Bradley (1955), whereby infrastructure became a tool for legitimising the colonial presence.

    This research is part of the LabourMap-Macau project and examines the construction of the CHCSJ during two key periods, corresponding to different contracts and interventions: the 19th century and the post-World War II era. Archival documents from 1873 highlight the Portuguese technical team’s deep interest in the Chinese workforce and the gradual “Westernisation” of architectural practices adopted by local labourers. The hospital’s initial construction involved complex bidding processes with companies from both Macau and Hong Kong. During this phase, Portuguese staff faced significant challenges, such as the absence of the metric system among local teams. These challenges required the development of conversion tables and practical solutions to overcome language barriers and ensure the implementation of European design ideas. By the mid-20th century, global construction systems had been fully integrated into Macau. There was a consolidated confidence in the quality of Chinese labour, and recruitment processes had become more streamlined. Notably, official reports from this period show that women were present on construction sites as part of the workforce, with their names explicitly included in technical records. Although both the 1873 pavilion and the 1954 Estado Novo representative building have since been demolished – replaced by a modern structure in 1989 – the histories linked to their construction and the dynamics of their labour force remain vital aspects that revive their historiographical presence and cultural legacy in Macau.

    Click here to download the paper.

  • Typology in Transition: Modern Housing and Postcolonial Urbanism in Luanda (Working Paper)

    Typology in Transition: Modern Housing and Postcolonial Urbanism in Luanda (Working Paper)

    Working Paper


    Typology in Transition: Modern Housing and Postcolonial Urbanism in Luanda

    Journal: Architecture + Infrastructures Working Paper Series 1: Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: Architecture, Cities and Labour
    Authors: Inês Lima Rodrigues, Maria Alice Mendes Correia
    Print: Dinâmia’CET-Iscte, 2026

    Built blocks Lots 3, 4 and 5, CTT Neighbourhood, Luanda. Simões de Carvalho and Lobo de Carvalho. Fernão Simões de Carvalho, personal archive.
    Kilamba Neighbourhood, Luanda. Works by Third Year students. Academic Year 2024-2025 MAC, AUN.

    Summary


    The architectural patterns of Luanda show how buildings survive political divisions and take on fresh ideological meanings throughout the urban past. The CTT district, developed between 1968 and 1974 by Fernão Simões de Carvalho and Lobo de Carvalho, combines the ultimate aims of Portuguese colonial modernism by seeking to strike a balance among logical planning, social diversity, and climatic adaptation. Emerging after CIAM’s internal discussions and the criticism of a universal modernism, the project converted these changing ideas into a colonial setting characterised by entrenched racial hierarchies and demographic pressure. Though only partially completed, the CTT complex served as a laboratory where post-CIAM issues with flexibility and urban identity were refracted through the managerial rationale of the Estado Novo. Following independence, the typological concepts employed in CTT reappeared in the twenty-first century “new centralities”, including Kilamba and Sequele. Created through Sino-Angolan collaboration and entrenched in neoliberal and post-socialist programs, these vast satellite cities recycled modernist superblock urbanism as a tool for state-led development, market creation, and socio-spatial control. Looking at the CTT complex in conjunction with its postcolonial legacies shows not only the tenacity of modern spatial logic but also the contested development of postcolonial identity, government, and labour, as revealed in typological continuities in Luanda. Hence, the CTT neighbourhood becomes a key hinge connecting late-colonial modernism to modern urbanism in Angola.

    Click here to download the paper.

  • Tracing Public Works and Labour in Historical Archives: From the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino to the National Archives of Cabo Verde

    Tracing Public Works and Labour in Historical Archives: From the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino to the National Archives of Cabo Verde

    Working Paper



    Tracing Public Works and Labour in Historical Archives: From the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino to the National Archives of Cabo Verde

    Journal: Architecture + Infrastructures Working Paper Series 2: Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: Architecture, Cities and Labour
    Authors: Sónia Pereira Henrique, Filipa Lopes
    Print: Dinâmia’CET-Iscte, 2026

    Invoices for the purchase of materials for the public
    works project to repair the Central School of Praia, 1948.
    Courtesy of the CV, IANCV.
    Part of a salary sheet issued to destitute individuals
    employed on public works projects during the preparation of
    a main road on the island of Santiago, 1927.
    Courtesy of the CV, IANCV.

    Summary

    This paper outlines archival research conducted within the framework of the ERC ArchLabour project and examines the methodological potential of cross‑referencing metropolitan archives with local archives in former Portuguese colonial territories, with Cabo Verde as a focal point. The paper is organised into three sections. The first addresses the archival processing and study of public works records undertaken over the past fifteen years at the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino in Lisbon. The second presents a preliminary survey of fonds and records relating to public works and labour at the National Archives Institute of Cabo Verde. The final section assesses the challenges and possibilities of cross‑referencing documentation between the two archives, drawing on a case study developed within the ArchLabour. Archival records are used to reconstruct the technical and administrative dimensions of public works projects, while personnel files and labour documentation from Cabo Verde provide insight into the everyday practices and labour experiences that shaped their execution. Combined, these materials demonstrate the methodological value of reading metropolitan and local archives in parallel to understand how colonial administrative processes were planned, negotiated and carried out.

    Click here to download the paper.

    [Cover] Photograph of berm-side works at the São Nicolau aerodrome, from the BEAPU Report – Cabo Verde Detachment, 1961. PT/AHU/IPAD/MU/DGOPC/DSUH/1886/07501. Courtesy of the PT, AHU.

  • Promising forms and people: narrating the “Golden Age of Construction” in colonial Hong Kong

    Promising forms and people: narrating the “Golden Age of Construction” in colonial Hong Kong

    Communication

    Promising forms and people: narrating the “Golden Age of Construction” in colonial Hong Kong

    Event: Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes. Architecture, Cities, Labour
    Author: Cecilia L. Chu, Chinese University of Hong Kong 
    Date: 13 Feb 2026
    Location: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon

    Biographical note

    Cecilia L. Chu is an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Trained as an urban historian with a background in design and conservation, her work focuses on the intersection of professional and popular knowledge of architecture and the built environment. She is the author of Building Colonial Hong Kong: Speculative Development and Segregation in the City, which received the 2023 Best Book Award from the Urban History Association and the 2024 International Planning History Society Book Prize. Chu is a co-founder and past president of DOCOMOMO Hong Kong and an editorial board member of the Journal of Urban History, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong, Surveying and Environment, and Built Environment. She received her PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.

    Click here to download the poster.