How did the masses of workers who built the great infrastructures and public buildings in Macau during the Portuguese rule impact their conception and construction? How were the long-distance relations between central institutions based in Portugal (e.g. the Colonial Urbanisation Office) and the colonial public works (CPW) in Macau, particularly crossing the 20th century, is still scarce and little is known about its labour management and operations. How and to what extent was it different from other former colonial territories? The discipline of architecture, when approaching the PW associated with colonialism and territorial occupation in Macau, has so far focused mainly on technicians and the constitution of design teams. Even studies about the technical and conceptual knowledge transfers between experts from Macau, Portugal, Hong Kong and China remain scarce. This focus on the design elite does not consider the input of workers who built infrastructure and public facilities. As such, critical questions about the labour involved in the spatialisation of the architectural plans are still missing: who were these workers? Did they come from mainland China? How were they recruited? How were they paid? What skills did they bring? What training did they receive? What repercussions did these work experiences have? What conflicts did they provoke? Did they resist? Did they collaborate? In response, the LabourMap-Macao will evaluate the role(s) and impact of mass labour to shed light on (still) invisible workers. It will survey master plans, architectural projects, construction sites, and labour movements to offer more complex narratives on the relationship between the history of China and Portuguese colonisation through PW construction. The project aims for a broader intersection of agents and geographies and to open a new line of research intersecting architectural, labour, and construction history studies. It will cross two colonial powers – the Portuguese and the Brit...

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 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 (mostly compulsive) 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? In answer, ArchLabour will develop a new theoretical framework for assessing mass labour in order to shine a spotlight on these invisible workers, thus establishing a connection between historical subalternity and the inequality that still haunts communities inheriting this past. Through the study of the diverse colonial experiences of the African countries that have Portuguese as one of their official languages (Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Principe, Angola and Mozambique), and covering a wide period from the modern colonization that begins after the Berlin Conference through the industrial capitalism’s exploitation praxis up to the years immediately following African independence, the project will cross the history of colonial architecture and the subject of Labour, with the history of Science applied to construction and post-colonial studies in architecture.

There are professions such as architecture where, despite all what women have achieved, a male hegemony persists and is not very permeable to gender revolutions. This exploratory project aims to identify and describe the struggle of women architects in Portuguese-speaking Africa for career recognition and representation as a consequence of the inequalities inherited from the colonial past. Unanswered research questions have been raised: Who were the women architects working in the former Portuguese colonial territories in Africa? What was their ethnic origin? What was their professional and educational background? What were their struggles for professional recognition? With the independence of these new countries, what roles did these women arch assume? The project seeks to fill a gap in the history of the African countries colonized by the Portuguese – Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, S. Tomé and Príncipe, Angola, and Mozambique – by approaching the condition of the precursor women architects understood as the first professionals to work in these territories. The offer of work during colonial rule was limited to the Colonial Public Works (CPW) and family offices. The transition to independence would bring novelties, such as cooperation programs and the reform of public services. The research will consider these changes in the profession and architectural culture, questioning how women survived and emerged in conditions of extreme labour vulnerability, however sometimes imposing themselves by the lack of technicians. The project will note 2 historical periods: 1953-1974, defined by late colonialism (from the arrival of the first woman architect in Africa, until the African independence); 1975-1985, characterized as the post-independence period (starting from the government transition, until the first woman graduated from the first architecture course at the Agostinho Neto University, Angola). Different types of careers will be addressed in this chronological plot: self-em...

What was the role of Architecture supporting Portuguese colonialism during the colonial war (1961-74)? Starting from the scarce bibliography that questions Architecture, Colonialism and War (He17;He18), but also pondering the interplay between Violence and Colonialism (LuMo14), the research focuses on the production of Housing during the liberation wars in the former Portuguese C ontinental Africa, and its repercussions in the immediate post-independence of Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique. It entails 2 phases: 1)assessment of the housing production carried out in the last 14 years of colonialism (and late Salazarism), considering the colonial society and the 3 agents of Colonial Public Works (C PW) involved, through archival and documentary treatment, cartography and historical description; 2)its identification and critical analysis in the immediate period of 1974/75 (abandonment, reconfiguration, appropriation) and its contribution to inequality in access and housing quality (plastic, technical, functional) by post-independence societies. The research explores the role of war in the emergence of control mechanisms based on Architecture and Urbanism, taking housing as epicentral. It observes 3 scenarios: a) Middle-class and affordable urban expansion neighborhoods, built over slums, to lodge and control populations; b) Settlements located in strategic economic areas; c) Rural resettlements resulting from the massive displacement of African peasants. A continuous reading between colonization and post-independence will be traced, relating the current right to housing with the different residential infrastructures inherited from the colonial period. In the 1st phase, the study considers 3 groups of inhabitants involved in colonial narratives: a) European settlers; b) Assimilados; c) African populations. It analyzes urban and rural landscapes and identifies the 3 main colonial agents: a)Self-employed Architects, in urban environments, using the architectural cultur...