English
Church of Saint Anthony (Polana)
Maputo [Lourenço Marques], Maputo, Mozambique
Religious Architecture
Located in a 1960s residential area (Sommerchield Quarter), it is the most emblematic work of architect Nuno Craveiro Lopes (1921-1972), commissioned in 1959 and built in the early 1960s (concluded in 1962). The church, a detached building, has conceptual, structural and formal affinities with the religious architecture of German expressionism and with the Mexican churches by the Spanish Félix Candela. Its space is based on a communitarian conception of liturgical celebration, visible in the unitary sense of circular pattern and the symbolic geometric subdivision. Its shape is the result of the sequential overlay of thin polygonal membranes of exposed concrete, with the voids closed in by glazed sashes and stained glass windows, in an ascending movement that culminates in the chromatic lighting of the central area, and unified by the symbol of the cross on the exterior.
