This paper examines the itinerant trajectories of two Portuguese female architects and their families, who worked in what is now the Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR) during the second half of the twentieth century, when the territory was still under Portuguese administration (until 1999). What significance do they hold for the history of architecture? The point of departure is a single, anonymously authored photograph from 1971, portraying the two women (together with three children) on the runway of Lourenço Marques airport (present-day Maputo). From this image unfolds their professional journey, beginning in Portugal and extending through Goa, the United States, Mozambique and Macau. The women carried with them a friendship forged during their years at architecture school, where they also met their future husbands. Their professional experiences, at times overlapping, are examined: one working primarily in a private practice, the other in public service; one mostly in partnership, the other largely independently; one intermittently, the other in continuity. Within the framework of the LabourMap-Macao project (PI Ana Vaz Milheiro, Co-PI Beatriz Serrazina), this essay draws mainly on a collection of testimonies and documents belonging to these women – the first known Portuguese female architects to practise in Asia.

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