Paper short abstract:

In the final period of Portuguese colonization (1945-1975), architects faced a challenge: to build the city for the local populations. This paper intends to explain the process of discovery of the native settlements and how its study has contributed to develop a "black" city planned by architects.

Paper long abstract:

With the end of the Second World War the independentist movements rise. Portugal is internationally pressed to decolonize, but resists until the 1974 revolution. One of the arguments for keeping its colonial Empire, particularly the African territories, is the development rates that are provided to the native populations, namely in the education and health fields, equivalent or even superior to the UNO demands to African Habitats.

From the late fifties on, the urban space and housing for the African populations is one of the main architectural and urban programs carried by the Portuguese architects in Africa. Facing the fact of being economically impracticable and culturally undesirable to build neighborhoods for the "native" population in a European canon, architects start to study the African habitat in missions, like the one they perform in the former Portuguese Guinea. The African house is one of the most studied subjects. The architects analyze the plans, describe its functions and study the traditional constructive systems. They are mostly interested in designing a "new African house typology", that, as Moreira Veloso writes, has "the minimum hygiene and comfort conditions and that contributes to the social promotion of those populations". This house serves as a module to the new urban spatial organization, forming low density neighborhoods, equipped with healthcare, education and sports programs, that are installed in organic layouts. These neighborhoods are still found in the contemporary African city, although its less rigid structure has allowed its disappearance more easily than the traditional "white" city, European inspired.