Category: News

  • Imperial companies and railways between Angola and Belgian Congo, 1910-1930

    Imperial companies and railways between Angola and Belgian Congo, 1910-1930

    Communication

    Imperial companies and railways between Angola and Belgian Congo, 1910-1930

    Event: T2M Annual Conference, Mobilities and Infrastructures: Transitions and Transformations
    Author: Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 23 – 25 September 2024

    Location: Leipzig, Germany

    “A decauville railway was built between Charlesville and Makumbi,” 1926. Source: Forminière, 1906-1956. AGR Brussels
    Benguela Railway, Section 6, December 1905. Source: AHU, Album 45-CFB

    Summary

    During early 20th century European colonialism in Africa, mining companies were set up as key vehicles for the exploitation and extraction of the interior regions. The colonial powers granted large concessions to these enterprises, giving them control over resources and trade in exchange for investment in infrastructure. Within the scope of these operations, railways played a pivotal role in facilitating the transport of trade and people, as well as establishing territorial connections. The expansion of these lines served the economic interests of both the colonial powers and the companies, while having a major weight on the landscape through the physical presence of the rails and the creation of new dynamics of mobility.

    This presentation focused on the mining networks between Angola and the Belgian Congo, established under the auspices of the Societè Generále de Belgique, to question the wider and long-lasting socio-spatial implications of the construction of railway lines, considering the multiple agents and agendas involved. It explored the roles played by Union Minière du Haut Katanga, Forminière and Diamang in planning, building, and using railways between the two territories. These were complex and multifaceted connections, involving the railway routes’ layout – from the decauville lines for local transport to the trans imperial connections provided by the Benguela Railway between Katanga and Lobito –, the displacement and mobility of workers in the production of these infrastructures and through their use, the employment of new technologies and construction materials and the adaptation by local populations living near the lines.

    Click here for more information.

    Related Case Studies

    Benguela Railway, Angola

  • Women, colonialism and building sites. Gender experiences in former African territories ruled by the Portuguese through colonial archives

    Women, colonialism and building sites. Gender experiences in former African territories ruled by the Portuguese through colonial archives

    Communication / Proceedings

    Women, colonialism and building sites. Gender experiences in former African territories ruled by the Portuguese through colonial archives

    Event: 8th International Congress on Construction History
    Authors: Ana Vaz Milheiro

    Date: 24 – 28 June 2024

    Location: ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Farol das Três Pontas. Road works. Source: Angola Hydrographic Mission 1936-1941, IICT
    Payrolls of the Public Works, Angola, 1877-1881. Report by Henrique dos Santos Rosa. Source: AHU, OP13914

    Summary

    Recent studies on the interaction between labor and colonialism have been challenging the claim that “the history of labor in public works construction is generally presented as a male experience” (Jha 2020). Following the still prevalent narratives, previous research that intersected Portuguese colonialism and unskilled labor also followed a male-oriented direction. Research on the hierarchies established on and by the construction site is still scarce, and the gap is even greater when women are involved. Despite the vast international literature, there are no narratives that frame women’s roles in public works in the former African territories under Portuguese rule (Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe). This article aims to explore how women filled these gaps, discussing the extent to which they took on logistical roles, incorporated unskilled tasks (quarrying stones; carrying mud), or influenced program and architectural agendas with an impact on design and construction systems, until they achieved greater empowerment during the colonial war/liberation (1961-74).

    Click here for the original publication.

  • “Model” Workers’ villages? Company rule and adobe-brick houses in late colonial Africa

    “Model” Workers’ villages? Company rule and adobe-brick houses in late colonial Africa

    Communication / Proceedings


    “Model” Workers’ villages? Company rule and adobe-brick houses in late colonial Africa

    Event: 8th International Congress on Construction History
    Author: Beatriz Serrazina

    Date: 24 – 28 June 2024

    Location: ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

     Brick factory in Lunda; blocks in stock (SPAMOI Report, 1961, DCV-UC/AD)
    Presentation at ETH Zurich

    Summary

    In the early 1920s, a severe influenza epidemic in the Panda mining camps, recently founded by Union Minière in southern Belgian Congo, shed light on the importance of housing material conditions. Due to medical studies and reports, a solution was soon to be found in single-family adobe houses. Bricks arguably offered plenty of “benefits”: they were cheap, made with local raw materials, easily assembled on site and did not require much expertise or heavy machinery. For the following decades, adobe was put forward by mining enterprises as a tool for and a symbol of control, neatness, salubrity, productivity and social hierarchy. When industrialization and urbanization issues became strongly entangled in the 1950s, the materialization of workers’ houses was not only a case study for scientists but also a key instrument to counter international politics and anxieties about African housing. This paper questions the role of the adobe-brick components in shaping the built environment in late colonial Africa. What was their impact on house design, construction sites and building teams? To what extent did they compete with other technologies, namely concrete and stone? The overlooked histories of mining villages’ construction illuminate significant trans-imperial circuits of knowledge transfer, running from the first on-site connections to the late international expert meetings. Far from being “workingman’s paradises”, as most company official reports suggested, adobe villages materialized multiple combinations of economic, social, moral and power guises, thus offering new perspectives on colonial construction, away from canonized actors, materials and norms. This communication was published in the conference proceedings: Beatriz Serrazina (2024), “Model” Workers’ villages? Company rule and adobe-brick houses in late colonial Africa,”Construction Matters,8th International Congress on Construction History, Stefan Holzer, Silke Langenberg, Clemens Knobling and Orkun Kasap (eds.). Verlag Vdf, 1216-1222.

    Click here to access the manuscript.

  • Large construction companies in the widespread of modern housing. A comparative analysis between Lisbon and Luanda

    Large construction companies in the widespread of modern housing. A comparative analysis between Lisbon and Luanda

    Communication / Proceedings

    Large construction companies in the widespread of modern housing. A comparative analysis between Lisbon and Luanda

    Event: 8th International Congress on Construction History
    Authors: Inês Lima Rodrigues, Francesca Vita
    Date: 24 – 28 June 2024

    Location: ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Housing Cooperative “Alegria pelo Trabalho”.  Building “O Livro” [The Book], Arch. Pinto dos Reis, 1974. Source: Inês Lima Rodrigues
    The CONFICA company’s promotion always maintained the image of the “happy couple”, while the size of the housing blocks increased over the years. Source: A província de Angola, August 3, 1958; June 16, 1959; and July 7, 1967 – courtesy Maria Alice Correia (assembled by the author).

    Summary

    From the late 1950s, Lisbon and Luanda experienced an exponential population growth that intensified with the outbreak of the colonial war (1961–1975), with the independence of the colonies under Portuguese rule and the end of the dictatorship in 1975. Due to the inefficiency of the public apparatus in responding to the housing crisis and providing different “housing for many people”, the state encouraged the private market (construction companies, cooperatives, developers, investors, etc.) to support the demand for housing in Lisbon and Luanda. The result was a boom in the construction industry, mainly through standardized high-rise buildings, which promoted access to the “home of one’s own” and promised a modern and mechanized lifestyle in central and peripheral locations for the emerging middle class. The role of medium-sized and large construction companies in the spread of modern housing was crucial in both Lisbon and Luanda. The construction companies not only provided the know-how to build quickly and with good quality, but they were also agents in the promotion of a new way of life, in the exchange of expertise and constructive references between Lisbon and Luanda and in the mobilization of different actors (public and private) in the making of the modern city.

    Click here for more information.

  • The house types and the type of house: the colonial form for indigenous domesticity

    The house types and the type of house: the colonial form for indigenous domesticity

    Panel

    The house types and the type of house: the colonial form for indigenous domesticity

    Event: European Architectural History Network. 8th International Conference
    Authors: Francesca Vita, Inês Lima Rodrigues
    Date: 19 – 23 June 2024

    Location: National Technical University of Athens, Greece

    Photo of the Session, 20 June 2024. Source: Francesca Vita
    Photo of the Session, 20 June 2024. Source: Inês Lima Rodrigues

    Summary

    Whether it constituted the physical extension of the imperialist projects, a means to discriminate or to influence indigenous way of life and to trigger processes of modernization, the House represented a “Tool of Empire” (Headrick, 1981; King, 1995).

    With the aim of “normalizing”, “standardizing” and “domesticating” (Teyssot, 1985) autochthonous way of life, the colonial administration undertook a process of dismantling vernacular forms of domesticity, by both condemning its architecture – its form, its materials, its fundamentals – and also its content – its domestic practices and users –.

    It was especially during the first half of the 20th century and in the aftermath of the WWII, that the colonial planning offices designed and redesigned across geographies a diverse range of house types aimed to dwell the indigenous populations in a diverse range of milieu: urban neighbourhoods, rural settlements, military camps. The house types designed suggested models of house and domesticity based on the rhetoric of modernity (Heynen, 2013) which have been shaped and negotiated according to the colonial purposes.

    For example, after the end of the Second World War, the house types proposals occasionally brought modernity closer to local realities. The implementation of industrial methods in solving the issue of urban housing resulted in housing typologies for the indigenous populations that showed an apparent compatibility between the modern standards and the interpretation of vernacular features.

    This session will focus on the production of house types and the type of house addressed to the indigenous populations by the colonial administrations. We encourage papers that discuss how the house types for the autochthonous populations operated as an agency for the rhetoric of modernization, development and assimilation, but also that unveil processes of appropriation and resistance occurred, how dwellers transformed, resisted or accustomed to the colonial house types and type of house. Finally, the session aims to bring together multiple geographies, especially focusing on the African continent (but not only), in order to begin to discuss whether and how the house types circulated across the colonial administrations and which type of house was collectively shaped, pondering the reasons of it.

    Click here for more information.

    Presentations

    • Beatriz Serrazina (Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon): Colonial labour housing: a ‘propaganda’ tool?
    • Igor Bloch (Ghent University / Vrije Universiteit Brussel); Laurence Heindryckx (Université libre de Bruxelles / Vrije Universiteit Brussel): The maison modèle: colonial imaginaries of model houses and model households in the Belgian Congo (1949-1959)
    • Dalal Musaed Alsayer (Kuwait University): Everywhere a Village: The Experiments of A.E.S. Alcock and IBEC in Designing the Global Rural Home
    • Sebastiaan Loosen (ETH Zurich): The Swahili House Typology as Contested Site of Modernization, 1910s-60s
    • Iain Low (University of Cape Town): South Africa, apartheid and after – the NE 51/9 housing typology and resistance to coloniality
  • Colonial labour housing: a ‘propaganda’ tool?

    Colonial labour housing: a ‘propaganda’ tool?

    Communication

    Colonial labour housing:

    a ‘propaganda’ tool?

    Event: European Architectural History Network. 8th International Conference
    Authors: Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 19 – 23 June 2026

    Location: National Technical University of Athens, Greece

    Union Minière, Lubumbashi Camp, Katanga, 1928[AGR, Sibeka, 530]
    Tipo de aldeia indígena Diamang, 1942 [DCV-UC/AD]

    Summary

    Colonial space was often produced for and supported by mineral extraction. Yet, none of the extractive businesses set up in Africa throughout the first half of the 20th century could run without workforce. By requiring the engagement of thousands of African people, private companies responsible for housing their labourers. Since both enterprises and governments believed disruption within the intimacy of household could serve multiple ends, villages became critical spaces for simultaneously running industrial areas and carrying out a “modernising” mission envisioned by European powers. In 1961, the director of a mining company’s labour service, operating in north-eastern Angola, wrote a few telling words: “The advantages of a well-built brick house are well known. Adding to labour productivity and stability, we must highlight the propaganda factor. What a valuable propaganda tool a permanent house is!”

    By following transformations in labour housing typologies over time, and while acknowledging strong inter-imperial networks connecting private corporations across Central Africa, mainly between Angola and Belgian Congo, this presentation aims to question the domestic space as a core arena for shaping, enduring and contesting colonialism. It will unpack house planning, design and materials, from the first “propaganda villages” in the 1930s to the later “modern neighbourhoods” built in the 1960s. Companies repeatedly tried to work with “models” and “types” of houses to create “legible” landscapes and “modern” communities – but reports show that reality on the ground was often messier than intended. Despite colonial imaginaries, “modern” houses run along native domesticities, thus shaping an intricate landscape.

    The overall goal is to understand how and to what extent transformations in housing have resulted from and been fuelled by different agents and agendas: the demands and know-how of local communities, the requests of international and inter-imperial organisations, the possibilities of growing scientific and technological research, alongside companies’ productivity drives.

  • ArchLabour “Projects in Progress” (Poster Session)

    ArchLabour “Projects in Progress” (Poster Session)

    Communication/Exhibition

    “Projects in Process” Poster Session.

    ArchLabour: Architecture, Colonialism and Labour. The role and legacy of mass labour in the design, planning and construction of Public Works in former African territories under Portuguese colonial rule

    Event: SAH Annual International Conference 2024
    Authors: Ana Vaz Milheiro, Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 17 – 21 Abril 2024

    Location: Albuquerque, USA

    Exhibition room for posters section, SAH Annual International Conference, Albuquerque, 2024
    Exhibition room for posters section, SAH Annual International Conference, Albuquerque, 2024

    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.

  • Building from non-simultaneities: Mabubas Dam, Angola

    Building from non-simultaneities: Mabubas Dam, Angola

    Communication

    Building from non-simultaneities: Mabubas Dam, Angola

    Event: SAH Annual International Conference Albuquerque 2024
    Authors: Ana Vaz Milheiro, Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 17 – 21 April 2024

    Location: Albuquerque, United States

    Construction of the bridge over the central spillway. Source: Inspection Report, 1951. AHU, OP5602
    Workers during the concreting of a dam section. Source: Inspection Report, 1950. AHU, OP5599

    Summary

    The Mabubas Dam, built in Angola between 1948 and 1954, was the first large infrastructural work promoted by the Portuguese state in Africa to sustain colonialism against the growing local and international scrutiny after World War II. Its 70-metre length, located in an isolated place near Luanda, resulted in an extensive and highly dynamic building site.

    Acknowledging the political, social and technological circumstances in the Mabubas case, this presentation aimed to investigate the overlooked histories of colonial construction spaces to contribute to broader debates on building site conditions. As a fixed construction yard, later giving rise to a new settlement, the Mabubas Dam offers an intricate research ground, merging thousands of people, different tasks and labour hierarchies. Three significant relationships were explored: the intricacies between European and African workers, the tensions among African communities and the manifold interactions across the specialization strata, namely the hostilities towards workers from other colonial geographies, as the Cape Verdean labourers, considered more “civilized” and therefore more “skilled”.

    Drawing from the thought-provoking “non-simultaneity” approach, by Heine and Rauhut, the presentation aimed to add new perspectives to the field from the peculiarities and complexities of colonial construction sites. While European building sites were based on familiar know-how systems and techniques, the construction spaces produced under colonialism arguably had a greater level of uncertainty, frequently exposed in reports. The colonial authorities did not control the traditional skills of the African communities nor the local materials, thus having to deal with unpredictable outcomes. Besides presenting a critical mapping of the colonial construction site, the presentation analysed its materialization in the archive. What information can be gathered in reports – from income to architectural design? What layers are absent (namely concerning women’s presence or building constraints)? How can these conditions contribute to more nuanced architectural histories?

    Click here for more information.

    Related Case Studies

    Mabubas Dam, Angola

  • Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: roundtable series I. Infrastructures + Labour + War

    Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: roundtable series I. Infrastructures + Labour + War

    Roundtable

    Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: roundtable series I. Infrastructures + Labour + War

    Event: Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: roundtable series I
    Date: 9 April 2024

    Location: Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal

    Summary

    Since 2019, the Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes International Congresses (CPCL) have been critical forums in enquiring about the entanglements between Architecture and Portuguese colonialism. While built works have often been the focus of Architectural history, multiple agents and agendas remain to be grasped. This first Roundtable on Infrastructures + Labour + War aims to question the role of still overlooked actors and agencies on different occupation strategies during late Portuguese colonialism. The debate will bring together the teams from the research projects ArchWar, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), and ArchLabour, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), both based at Dinâmia’CET-Iscte, along with invited consultants and scholars.

    The morning session will feature the launch of the special issue “Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: Architecture, Cities and Infrastructures” (no. 39) of the journal Africana Studia (ed. CEAUP). The volume brings together a set of articles selected from the first edition of the CPCL Congresses, held in Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. The session will be moderated by Ana Silva Fernandes (University of Porto), editor of this issue, and participated by the authors, either in person or remotely.

    In the afternoon, Cristiana Bastos (University of Lisbon), Peter Scriver (University of Adelaide), and Johan Lagae (University of Ghent) will share their perspectives on unskilled labour, building yards and colonial public works, crossing different inter-imperial experiences and setting forward new avenues for research. Ana Vaz Milheiro (Iscte-IUL), the Principal Investigator of ArchWar and ArchLabour projects, will chair the debate.

    Click here for more information.

  • Wartime residential rural landscapes the Guinea- Bissau case during the colonial/liberation war with the Portuguese (1963–1974)

    Wartime residential rural landscapes the Guinea- Bissau case during the colonial/liberation war with the Portuguese (1963–1974)

    Journal Article

    Wartime residential rural landscapes the Guinea-Bissau case during the colonial/liberation war with the Portuguese (1963–1974)

    Journal: Cogent Arts & Humanities, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2303184
    Author: Ana Vaz Milheiro
    Date: 2024

    Empada resettlement, Guinea, Plano de Reordenamento de Empada, António Moreira Veloso, Urbanism and Housing Services Board of the General-Directorate of Public Works and Communications, Overseas Ministry, 1970, Source: Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino [IPAD 858].
    Empada resettlement, Guinea, Plano de Reordenamento de Empada, António Moreira Veloso, Urbanism and Housing Services Board of the General-Directorate of Public Works and Communications, Overseas Ministry, 1970, Source: Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino [IPAD 858].

    Summary

    This paper aims to study the military housing campaigns carried out in the last 14 years of Portuguese colonialism (1961–1975), through archival and documentary treatment, cartography, historical and architectural description. Critical assessment and architectural analysis of the settlements and villages promoted in a warfare context allows an assessment of how large-scale housing programs are still present in the built and social landscapes of formerly colonized countries. Some of the data recollected suggests that, in Guinea, about 100 military resettlements were built; in Angola, only in the Lunda region, 730 villages were intervened; and in Mozambique the new settlements caused the displacement of one million peasants. The article will focus on the Guinea case by introducing what is described here as ‘the architects’ feebleness’, debating the pragmatism of the military in opposition to the idealism of the architects.

    Click here for the original publication.

    Related Case Studies

    Strategic Villages, Guinea-Bissau