Between the musseque and the neighbourhood unit: Spotting "compagnons de route" architectures in Luanda (1961-1975)

Abstract

Taking full advantage of Nnamdi Elleh's proposal, by seeking to "keep the focus on the modern" (2014), this article explores how during the late colonial period in the city of Luanda, Angola, conditions arose to link the future of architectures with unequal roots. On the one hand, an architecture strongly qualified and praised by the historiography of modern architecture, which would result in the Prenda Neighbourhood Unit No. 1, and on the other hand, the musseque (Angolan slum) of the same name, which already occupied that territory in the suburbs of the colonial city. Placed in the core of the musseque, the Neighbourhood Unit (NU) was used strategically by the colonial state to control African population. Through the embodying of "brutalist imaginaries", it would be permanently linked to a new landscape, strongly supported by self-produced architecture. As a case study, the Prenda musseque not only preceded the new NU, but coexisted with its realisation and appropriation, surviving to this day. It thus provides multiple lenses for analysing how architecture promoted by the "underprivileged classes" can today contribute to broadening the architectural lexicon of production catalogued as modern. Drawing on multiple skills, the knowledge of the musseque communities was neglected by the late-modern colonisers who inhabited the new Prenda units. This article evokes the concept of "omnicompetence", explored by Glenn Adamson (2020) in the broader context of American crafts shaped by pre-colonial societies. Also in Luanda's musseques, a long formal and constructive genealogy has emerged as pluri-competences. Its long coexistence with modern culture during the colonial period and beyond was reinforced by its contemporary resilience reflected in the transfer of technical and formal knowledge creating a vernacular architecture with a strong modern tone. The article ends by highlighting how these architectures have mutually legitimised each other as "compagnons de route".