Khovo Home

Maputo [Lourenço Marques], Maputo, Mozambique

Equipment and Infrastructures

In Mozambique, school buildings are developed as part of a process of increasing autonomy, fundamentally driven by the architect Fernando Mesquita (1916-1990's), under the Provincial Public Works Services, reconfigured and developed through various levels, from primary education up to secondary and higher education. According the developments conducted from 1951 within the UNESCO, the educational program was one of the main subjects of investment, following the present strategies in many African countries.

The Khovo Lar is an example of student’s residences that follow the construction of school buildings.

Included in Book 14, "Learning Machines" of “Vitruvius Mozambicanus: The Twenty-Five Architectures of Excellent, bizarre and extraordinary Amancio Guedes” (1985), the students residence Khovo Lar results from the Swiss protestant Mission commission to the architect Amâncio d’Alpoim Miranda Guedes (1925-2015) in 1966, with the social objective of accommodating indigenous students from the interior who came to study to Maputo.

Completed in 1973, is located between the Ahmed Sekou Toure and Eduardo Mondlane Avenues and implanted in the city's fabric defined by the Araújo Plan in 1887. The plot is a rectangle measuring about 55 meters long and 40 meters wide, accessible by a small northwest-southeast lane.

The building occupies the full depth of the plot area and consists of two volumes: the main volume of five stories above the street level and a basement with natural light, placed parallel to the street, slightly indented, occupying the entire front of the plot; and a one floor volume, located at the back, defined by a set of support buildings such as the refectory and toilets, organized around a patio. The two volumes are connected by two covered passages defining the Southwest and Northeast patio limits.

The main building consists of two symmetrical volumes, corresponding to the separation of genders, therefore, the vertical circulation system is repeated and connected to the exterior covered passages through the entrance floor, where is also located the living rooms, reception and distribution areas. In the basement were located the study rooms, that together with social rooms, corresponded to the only common areas of this volume. In the upper floors are located two dormitories per floor in each block, served by communal sanitary facilities. The laundries are placed on the roof top.

The main facade is characterized by the generated rhythm of the balconies that project on the half-buried strip of land that lies between the sidewalk wall and the building. Smaller balconies protect each other from the sun. The ones of the rooftop, as indeed the two building entrances are protected by simple flaps. The biggest balconies corresponding to the dormitories are fully protected by blinds (“venezianas”) like the old lattices of bearings, or “muxarabis”. It is the distance of the blocks in relation to the street and the lowered nearby floor that allow a wide lighting of the basements.

On the rear façade, where direct sunlight is shorter and not so intense, there are large opened verandas, symmetrical to those of the main façade and without protection. The respective windows, from wall to wall, allow cross ventilation in the dormitories. On this side, the two rectangular blocks of the stairwells gain prominence, in both protruding a vertical row of small balconies.

Nowadays the Khovo Lar maintains its function, despite some transformations in basement spaces and coverage uses. It shows signs of degradation although it retains the essential characteristics of the initial project.

Original by João Vieira Caldas and Francisco Seabra Ferreira.

(FCT: PTDC/AUR-AQI/103229/2008)

Adaptation by Ana Tostões and Daniela Arnaut.