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Silva, L. M. (2025). High standards for women: Architectural education as a pathway to resilient work in former Portuguese Africa. In Ana Vaz Milheiro, Beatriz Serrazina (Ed.), II International Congress on Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: Architecture, Colonialism and War: Papers’ booklet. (pp. 324-340). Lisboa:  ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa.

L. C. Silva,  "High standards for women: Architectural education as a pathway to resilient work in former Portuguese Africa", in II Int. Congr. on Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: Architecture, Colonialism and War: Papers’ booklet, Ana Vaz Milheiro, Beatriz Serrazina, Ed., Lisboa,  ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, 2025, pp. 324-340

@inproceedings{silva2025_1764928298084,
	author = "Silva, L. M.",
	title = "High standards for women: Architectural education as a pathway to resilient work in former Portuguese Africa",
	booktitle = "II International Congress on Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: Architecture, Colonialism and War: Papers’ booklet",
	year = "2025",
	editor = "Ana Vaz Milheiro, Beatriz Serrazina",
	volume = "",
	number = "",
	series = "",
	pages = "324-340",
	publisher = " ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa",
	address = "Lisboa",
	organization = "",
	url = "https://eahn.org/2022/08/ii-international-congress-on-colonial-and-postcolonial-landscapes-architecture-colonialism-and-war/"
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - High standards for women: Architectural education as a pathway to resilient work in former Portuguese Africa
T2  - II International Congress on Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: Architecture, Colonialism and War: Papers’ booklet
AU  - Silva, L. M.
PY  - 2025
SP  - 324-340
CY  - Lisboa
UR  - https://eahn.org/2022/08/ii-international-congress-on-colonial-and-postcolonial-landscapes-architecture-colonialism-and-war/
AB  - Although there is still little literature that crosses colonial and post-colonial studies with gender
studies, it is increasing. Concerning Portuguese Africa, if we go back to the biographical origins of the
first women authors, in the 1950s, investigation should include their training path, a decade earlier, as
young adults and girls, in order to be completely understandable. The metropoles of the old colonial
Empires were protagonists in this framework. For women to become architects – as self-employed,
technicians working for the Public Works departments or cooperants with the reconstruction of the
new independent nations –, they had to attend architecture courses in the available global north
schools. In Portugal, the old beaux-arts tradition led, in the 1960s, to a myriad of political and
aesthetic trends other than concrete propositions for the outer world and its specificities. Furthermore,
north and south of the country would favour different aspects of the same one-nation-oriented official
syllabi; and if the capital, Lisbon, graduated more students per year – and thus more women – some of
these students would migrate to the country’s second city, Porto, and its (Superior) School of Fine Arts
(E(S)BAP), later Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP). Today we are able not
only to trace the existing women and girls students from this northern school, their names and most
important works, but may go back to their original motivations and their first accomplishments in the
perspective of their academic records and school works archives. We specifically look into two
women architects that serve as case studies for our arguments: Carlota Quintanilha (EBAP, 1953) and
Alda Tavares (ESBAP 1971/74). This paper will be structured in three parts that accompany this line
of though: firstly, it will gather the most pertinent information known about these women (a resumed
state of the art); secondly, it will list all the data attained for this particular investigation; thirdly, it will
validate the hypothesis of the two women pointed out that graduated in Porto School having had a
resilient work in Portuguese colonial Africa.
ER  -