Orthodoxy and freedom: infrastructural buildings in Angola and Mozambique from the third quarter of the twentieth century

Abstract

[Excerpt] From the late 1930’s to the mid 1950’s the design freedom of Portuguese architects was limited, both in State and Church commissions, to a formal repertoire of monumental and nationalist content. Strengthened by the Estado Novo dictatorial regime it comprised an eclectic mixture of both popular and erudite elements taken from heterogeneous stylistic sources. The neo-baroque building of the Bank of Angola (1947), by Vasco de Morais Palmeiro (1987-1968), strategically located by the Luanda’s waterfront, or the Português Suave Cathedral of Our Lady of Fátima (1956), by Raul Lino (1879-1974), erected on the main Nampula’s avenue, in Mozambique, are examples of this monumental architecture, that is widely spread across the Portuguese colonial empire.