“A habitação popular nos musseques de Luanda: transformação e urbanização – Ensaios para uma intervenção sustentável (2021)” [Popular housing in the musseques of Luanda: transformation and urbanization – Essays for a sustainable intervention] by Tânia Rosário | Master Thesis

Abstract: “The musseques of accompanied the city’s growth, reflecting the different seasons of its history and expressing racial and social segregation from the first colonial occupations to the mirage of contemporary high glazing. With the city’s expansion, the self-produced settlements spread out wildly, suffering natural threats and lacking infrastructure despite its cultural richness. Its signs of precariousness have been a concern for the city’s management, and in recent years, several entities and specifically urban planners have sought new approaches, contradicting the tabula rasa paradigm. The high level of precariousness of the houses in the musseques, the need of studies on housing and the lack of cultural identity of contemporary buildings motivated the interest in the habitability mode in the popular musseques of Luanda. The revisiting houses surveyed by other authors, inserted in different contexts, such as the Boa Esperança neighborhood (10 km from the center) and the 11 de Novembro neighborhood (11.6 km from the center) and the deepening of the study of houses in the Chicala neighborhood ( inserted in the center), allowed us to understand the anxieties and rationalities of families, reflect on the different ways of intervening in the musseques and rethink the role of the architect in a society like Luanda that largely self-builds its neighborhoods and houses. The essays outlined in the last chapter are based on the notions addressed in the first chapter, of vernacular architecture, the urbanization process of African cities, of habitat sustainability, and incorporate an anthropological look at culture and practices in space. This approach gives the architect greater listening power to the inhabitants and instinctively greater empathy and a more appropriate impact on the place and residents.”

 

This master’s thesis, written by Tânia Rosário and supervised by Isabel Raposo, was defended in 2021 for the Master’s degree in interior design and building renovation at the Universidade of Lisbon. It is available, in Portuguese and open access at ULisboa’s Repository.

 

Photo: Paulo César Santos (CC0)

ANO

2021

AUTORES

Tânia Rosário

EDITORES

Isabel Raposo