Relational Modernities: The Missionary Architecture Of Pancho Guedes In Colonial Mozambique

Portuguese-born Mozambican architect Amâncio Pancho Guedes (1925 2015) designed several hundred buildings that became icons of late-colonial African modernism. His expressive design language, the Stiloguedes, is even recognised as a distinct style in its own right. Relational Modernities focuses on Guedes's lesser-known work: the quieter, more austere buildings he designed for Swiss and British Protestant missionary societies in the then-Portuguese-ruled Mozambique: schools, student dormitories, and community centres. Architectural historian Silvia Balzan situates them within the unequal society and politics of the country in the later stages of colonial rule. She demonstrates how Guedes and the missionary societies created alliances and spaces that were inevitably intertwined with colonial structures, yet at the same time already open to a postcolonial future. As relational modernity, Guedes's hybrid practice dissolved dichotomies between the colonizers and the colonized, the secular and the religious, Western modernity and Indigenous African culture. Silvia Balzan reexamines Guedes's legacy beyond stylistic eccentricity or missionary charity and assesses the sociopolitical and cultural significance of the buildings themselves, which continue to shape Mozambicans' everyday lives to this day. AUTHORS: Silvia Balzan is an architectural historian and lecturer in architectural studies at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on colonial and postcolonial modernism, examining buildings, materials, and infrastructure and their ecological and geopolitical repercussions. Sascha Roesler is a professor of architectural theory at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio. SELLING POINTS: . First book on Portuguese-born Mozambican architect Amâncio Pancho Guedes's (1925 2015) buildings for Swiss and British Protestant missionary societies in late-colonial Mozambique . Demonstrates how Guedes's buildings for missionary societies played a key role in mediating between colonial power, religious concerns, and local aspirations . Assesses the sociopolitical and cultural significance of Guedes's buildings, which continue to shape Mozambicans' everyday life to this day . Contributes to urgent debates on the decolonisation of architectural history, colonial legacies, and their repercussions in the present 36 colour, 128 b/w illustrations