Summary

This article focuses on the experience of Maria Emília Caria, a Portuguese architect who worked for more than a decade in the archipelago of Cape Verde, one of Portugal’s five African colonies, until 1975. The study is based on archival documents, oral histories, and fieldwork, to address the scarcity of sources often characteristic of research on professional women. The article discusses how gender influenced Caria’s performance as an architect, and how the confinement of her work to a marginal territory in the Portuguese colonial context ultimately allowed her to play an influential and autonomous role. Caria’s main period of activity coincided with Colonial or Liberation Wars (1961–74), which, although not directly affecting Cape Verde, would influence both so-called “welfare programmes” and access to public and private investment. The state of extreme deprivation and precariousness of these islands would ultimately affect Caria’s urban planning proposals and, consequently, their eventual failure. 

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Cover image: Maria Emília Caria, Urbanisation Project for the City of Mindelo – Island of São Vicente, Cape Verde, 1969. Stored at the Instituto do Arquivo Nacional de Cabo Verde, Praia, box no. 1673. Photograph of archival record by Ana Vaz Milheiro, 2025.