Mozambique, the Portuguese colonial heritage
Mozambique's oldest architectural monuments can be found on the island of the same name, which has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1991 for the quality of its colonial architectural unity, thanks to the constant use of the same building techniques and materials for five centuries. The island is home to an astonishing fortified city, a former trading post established by the Portuguese in the early 16th century, which was the seat of the colonial government until 1898. Here, you can admire the Saint-Sébastien fortress, which withstood the attacks of pirates and other enemies of the crown. Note its powerful bastions, notably São Gabriel and Santa Barbara. A jewel of military architecture, the fortress has two distinct faces: the powerful and impregnable one facing the sea, and the one facing the land, to which a beautiful stone path leads. Inside, don't miss the Notre-Dame-du-Bastion chapel, a masterpiece of Manueline art, a style characterized by an abundance of decorative motifs combining Moorish, medieval and Christian motifs, and evocations of the sea and nature. Once you've visited the fortress, set off to discover the stone town in the northern part of the island. Its stone and lime dwellings are a superb blend of Swahili, Arab and Indo-Portuguese influences, with beautifully carved doors.
Triumph of modernism and Art Deco
Most of the buildings that can be admired today in Mozambique's major cities were built in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1892, Maputo, the capital, was endowed with a strange edifice: the Casa de Ferro, or Iron House. The building takes its name from the fact that it is made entirely of steel plates. Imagine how hot it can get on a hot summer's day... and how many mosquitoes it attracts! That's why it was never inhabited. Designed by Gustave Eiffel, who was trying to develop prefabricated housing techniques, he was unfamiliar with Mozambique's extremely hot and humid climate, which was unsuitable for his construction specialty: iron. Gustave Eiffel also designed Maputo's railway station, considered one of the most beautiful in the world. Built between 1895 and 1910, it is a masterpiece of modernity and a superb blend of styles, blending historicist and Art Nouveau influences. Admire its ceiling adorned with superb wrought-iron decorations and supported by skilfully carved and decorated columns, not forgetting its carved wooden doors and superb azulejos. Still in Maputo, the Villa Algarve, a fine example of historicist architecture with its naturalistic azulejos, is the subject of much debate. Long the headquarters of the secret police and therefore a symbol of oppression for Mozambicans, it is now abandoned, while some would like to turn it into a museum of colonial history. In Inhambane, you can stay in superb pastel-colored Art Deco buildings.
But the movement that has left the greatest mark on Mozambique, and Maputo in particular, is modernism. The great representative of this movement was the Portuguese architect and artist Pancho Guedes, who built almost five hundred buildings in Mozambique. While he developed the key themes of modernism, starting with individuality of function and brutalism in the use of materials, he never forgot to integrate the traditions and cultures that make up African identity into all his creations. Similarly, far from the austere geometric forms of certain modernist buildings, he incorporated curves and other fluid forms into his edifices, which he also used in his paintings. For Guedes, architecture had to be alive, almost animal-like, and thus create an immediate emotion. Similarly, for him, architecture had to be thought of as a total work of art. He therefore worked with many local craftsmen, whom he trained himself. In this, he was closer to the architectural concepts of Art Nouveau than to the modernist movement. Among his finest creations are the astonishing Hotel de Bilene, whose play of swelling shapes is reminiscent of Gaudí, the Casa das Três Girafas with its three giraffe-like chimneys, Saipal, the Maputo bakers' cooperative in the shape of giant Portuguese loaves, and the Dragon Building. Another modernist masterpiece not to be missed is the incredible Santo António da Paloma church in Maputo, designed by Nuno Craveiro in the shape of... a lemon squeezer! This church is considered one of the sanctuaries of Brutalism. On the capital's Place de l'Indépendance, you can't help but admire Maputo's magnificent cathedral, a jewel of late Art Deco designed by civil engineer Marcial de Freitas e Costa, with its spires pointing skywards in its immaculate white habit. And don't miss the Art Deco lines of the two period cinemas, Ciné Africa and Scala Cinema.
Finally, the more curious can visit Beira's Grande Hotel, now in ruins and transformed into an astonishing shantytown. Designed by architect Francisco Castro, the hotel boasted an Olympic swimming pool, cinema and sumptuous ballroom, making it a monumental beacon of 1960s modernism. Today, its abandonment ironically returns the building to its pure expression, highlighting the radicality of its concrete structure. This city within a city boasts a church, a mosque, a school and vegetable gardens - the famous machambas- which have taken up residence in the concrete cracks.
From traditional houses to ecolodges
Alongside colonial relics and modernist examples, Mozambique's architecture also features traditional houses. The finest examples of this vernacular architecture can be found on the island of Mozambique, in the south to be precise, in what is known as the Macuti district, named after the technique used to build these dwellings, recognizable by their palm-leaf roofs. The leaves are tied around a stick, forming a tile which is then attached to the skeleton of the frame made from bamboo and mangrove wood. Today, houses with concrete walls are flourishing, but most have stone and lime walls. Some houses are painted, with carved and decorated windows. In villages, dwellings take the form of circular huts, or more rarely rectangular ones. The conical shape is explained by the presence of a central column supporting the entire edifice, which otherwise has no interior partitions. However, a slight gap is left between the wall and the roof to facilitate ventilation. Originally, the walls were made of a mixture of mud, reed and clay, particularly resistant to climatic conditions. Roofs, meanwhile, were again made from palm leaves. Today, bricks and corrugated iron are replacing these natural materials. As for dwellings, they are moving away from the rural conception of the house housing the extended family, to become classic houses. The traditional, naturally ventilated hut, which is of interest at a time when green energies are making a comeback, has also been a major inspiration for the ecolodges springing up all over the country, whose mission is to limit their impact on the environment, preserve flora and fauna and promote the local economy. A case in point is the Nuarro Ecolodge, not far from the coastal town of Inharrime, whose huts blend in so well with the dune vegetation as to be almost invisible.
Future plans
As everywhere else in the world, and especially in Africa where the big cities are experiencing a demographic boom, there is a rural exodus of poor people hoping to find a better life in the city, given the long hours spent working in the fields. This urban pressure reflects the country's astonishing economic growth. But most of its cities have neither the means nor the strength to adapt to such pressure. Today, most of the country's inhabitants live in shantytowns, where precarious dwellings with no access to running water or electricity are multiplying. In an attempt to strategically manage this massive urbanization, the state has teamed up with NGOs and the local population to design a city that is easier to live in. The government has distributed plots of land so that each inhabitant can build his or her own home. An initiative applauded by the UN. Similarly, many architectural projects are based on the traditional house model to create low-rent housing that significantly improves living conditions for residents, thanks to larger, two-storey buildings that are brighter and naturally ventilated in hot weather. But there's still a long way to go. At the same time, in the heart of Maputo, a number of skyscrapers and luxury residences are springing up to attract tourists and businessmen, notably the country's two tallest towers, the Bank of Mozambique (130 m) and the Predio 33 Andares (119 m). Alongside this formatted capitalist architecture, some architects have opted for sobriety. Such is the case of the architects from the Dutch firm Kaan, responsible for the beautiful Dutch Embassy in Maputo. The building was conceived as a concrete monolith, part of which has been removed to make way for an open garden surrounded by luminous columns, and whose abundant trees generate a natural roof in the interests of sustainable development. Outside the cities, a different kind of challenge is emerging: that of protecting the habitat in the face of climatic constraints (recurring cyclones and flooding in particular) and economic pressures (increasing numbers of sand extraction quarries threatening many coastal villages...). Between respect for tradition and openness to modernity, Mozambique must find the right balance to reinvent itself.
