Architecture for children: Colonial architects, climate design and enduring nursery buildings (1957-1964)

Abstract

The architecture of school buildings in former colonial territories became archetypal in terms of climate response by architects who mastered the language and technological lexicon of the Modern Movement. These architectures have been identified as optimal responses to a discourse close to current theories of mitigating the Anthropocene, insofar as they were focused on sustainable design and reduced the use of climate control technologies (Quintã, 2019). After WWII, pivotal studies on designing with climate, by authors trained in former colonial geographies, such as the British architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, encouraged school buildings to adapt and adjust to the various challenges of modern culture, including the climate and local resources (1956). This position was widely promoted in the early historiography of the Modern Movement, which centred on the Global South, and extended to the study of Portuguese colonialism (Tostões, Ferreira, 2014). Against this background, this paper examines two nursery schools built in Maputo (Mozambique) and Luanda (Angola) in the early 1960s by the architects Pancho Guedes and Simões de Carvalho. These projects conveyed international debates in broader meetings promoting modern culture, such as the UIA (Union Internationale des Architectes). In particular, the "Charter for School Buildings", resulting from the Rabat meeting in 1959, would directly impact the rejection of the monumental scale, the introduction of spatial flexibility, structured circulation, and outdoor spaces on a child's scale. The nursery in the Cazenga neighbourhood (Angola) and the Piramidal kindergarten (Mozambique) are now established as educational institutions adapted to contemporary societies, with little maintenance and occasional adjustments to new programmes, reinforcing a formal and technical performance open to post-colonial societies and challenging the framework of their original conception. As true “architectures for children”, these buildings continue contributing to early environmental education.