Architecture

MUTATIONS AND ARCHITECTURES : ARCHITECTURE AND COLONIALISM IN MACAO

Diogo Burnay *

Fig. 1 - View of the Praia Grande bay, today, taken from the balcony of the Bela Vista Hotel (the official residence of the Portuguese Consul).

"A Portuguese who fell asleep in Lisbon and, by magic, woke up in Hong Kong, would not be able to recognise where he was, but he surely would know that this was not a Portuguese city. If the same Portuguese woke up near the Nine Islands and, further on, he could see, from the ship, the Chapel of our Lady of Guia, the Hospital of S. Januário, the S. Francisco Barracks and the houses along the Praia Grande, and beyond those, the houses of the Chunambeiro and finally the hilltop Chapel of our Lady of Penha, he would say to himself, I don't know what city this is, but I am definitely looking at a Portuguese city by the sea. After arriving at the Porto Interior (Inner Harbour), the same Portuguese would feel lost again: What is this? What kind of boats are these? What kind of strange people are these? What sort of house is that, the likes of which I have never seen before? Am I dreaming or am I awake? After this, still under the same impression, he would then go to the Leal Senado (Senate) Square. After rubbing his eyes as if to wake from a somewhat surreal dream, he would look at the Leal Senado (Senate House) and the granite prison building and feel reassured that all that was surrounding him was indeed Portuguese. After strolling around the Praia Grande, he would want to see the Chunambeiro, 1 then to visit the several churches, all undoubtedly Portuguese.

“Today, however, this is no longer the case. The city has, over the last thirty years, sadly lost most of its Portugueseness (see Figure 1). The government and the locals have been, with almost no hesitation or interference, spending millions of patacas (the local currency) to replace the good with the worst one can possibly imagine, ruining and denationalising the city. What was either typically Portuguese or typically Chinese has been destroyed. We once had a city as no-one had in the Far East, a city worth of being visited. Today we have a shapeless and characterless city, from which almost all attractions and picturesqueness have been removed without a trace.

“I still remember, when I arrived in Macao, listening to foreigners admiring and contemplating the city."2 (Silva Mendes, 1929).

Though this text is not contemporary, it has been quoted many times by different authors as having a somewhat timeless character. Manuel Vicente has pointed out that the way Silva Mendes "depicted the transformations of the city still seems to prevail nowadays with a certain degree of sincerity.”3

Fig. 2 - Ruins of S. Paulo (1950 approximately).

Fig. 3 - Macao in the late 16th century.

Yet what strikes me as extremely interesting in Silva Mendes' text is the necessity and consequent capacity to feel reassured by the ability to recognise and to identify with the images of a city far away from one's homeland.

Is there a modern colonial architecture in Macao?

Was there in Macao, as Silva Mendes stated, a distinctively Portuguese colonial architecture?

Is Macao's development as a port city related only to other Portuguese colonial port cities, or also to other port cities world-wide that are interrelated through the development of colonialism, imperialism and the world-economic system?

What were the counter-colonial influences in the development of colonial architecture?

Colonial architecture has often been described as a direct import of eclectic forms from the imperial cores of metropolitan culture to their respective peripheries. This notion seems to be mainly rooted in a formal and empirical approach to architectural historiography as a search for a set of given built paradigms. Even with this definition, in the process of transferring metropolitan, imperial or peripheral forms and norms to other peripheries, modes of production and technological means had always to go through a process of mutation to adapt to local conditions, be they climatic, social, political or other.

A fine example of this is the fact that St. Paul's church was built on the coast of China in the early 17th century mainly by Japanese workers who, as it seems, were not experienced enough to carry out the stone work; in any case, the church was built with construction techniques that were unknown in this part of the world (see Figure 2).

In his book "Culture and Imperialism," Edward Said state that "the novel plays an extraordinarily important role in helping to create imperial attitudes towards the rest of the world. As the historian Michael Doyle puts it, "Empire is the relation, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society." It is my belief that, just as Said viewed role of the novel, so should we understand architecture in colonial cities as one among many other cultural products of colonial interchange. We should perceive architecture, as Anthony King suggests, 4 on a global scale and in relation to regional and international political, economic, social and cultural aspects of the world economic system.

MACAO - FROM COMMERCIAL ENTREPOT PORT TO COLONIAL CITY

Fig. 4 - Panoramic view of Praia Grande, from the east. George Chinnery. HKSBC collection.

Fig. 5 - Panoramic view of Praia Grande, from Nathaniel Kisman's residence. Martyn Gregory's collection (England).

The institutions of colonialism (King, 1990: 34), mainly associated with the development of State and Empire (Said, 1993: 8) started to be built by the Portuguese colonialists as soon as they established themselves in Macao in the middle of the 16th century. With the purpose of spreading Faith and Empire, the religious congregations, almost directly dependent on Rome, were the organising cores of the city, around which the Portuguese built their houses.

These institutions and their buildings, through their relationship to the city, their forms and architectural styles, were also clearly both representatives and instruments of the imposition of social, political and cultural change, as well as the resulting social and racial segregation, that was brought about by an Imperial and thus colonial (Said, 1993: 8) presence.

By the turn of the 17th century, the city had become a European center at the gates of China, a clear "extension of the international urban cities" (King, 1990: 140). It was planned, much like a typical medieval Portuguese port city, to operate in the imperial network as a vehicle for economic dependency and consequently dependent urbanisation (see Figure 3).

A century later the Praia Grande developed as a waterfront promenade where the colonial government and some of the foreign commercial companies built their headquarters (see Figure 4). These buildings were mainly designed at the 'core' of the colonial cultural and technological system of production. They were reproductions, not only of eclectic and classical metropolitan forms, but also of ideals and concepts of imperial and consequently colonial luxury and opulence perpetrated by either Portuguese or other European (mainly British) architects who inflicted much of the spatial and racial segregation onto the colonial city (see Figure 5 and Figure 6).

After the establishment of the 'unequal treaties' and the seizure of the whole peninsula of Macao and Taipa and Coloane islands, a series of urban planning and sanitation measures were introduced in the second half of the 19th century. These were related also to certain changes in the modes of production at the imperial core. These were based on principles of western rationality, technology and legislation, and proclaimed the beginning of the triumph of professionalism.

Fig. 6 - External view of N. Kisman's residence. 1843. George Chinnery. Martyn Gregory's collection (England).

Fig. 7 - Restored public buildings in Av. Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida.

The plans for the 'New Avenues' embodied also a reproduction of western urban planning models as they were implemented through a series of improvements and expropriations, obliterating what was left of the agricultural production and thus reinforcing the high degree of economic, political and cultural interdependence between the colonial city of Macao and the capitalist colonial world-economy.

The most significant institutions of colonialist architecture that were built during this period of romantic opulence - social representations of pleasure and commercial prosperity - were conspicuous reproductions and transgressions of the neo-classical ideals and forms of what was already an international development of European architecture (see Figure 7).

Amongst the colonial institutions built in the second half of the 19th century were the Lighthouse (the first on the south coast of China) (see Figure 8) in 1865; the D. Pedro V Theatre, 5 designed by Germano Marques; the Military Club in 1870 (see Figure 9); the Moorish Barracks in 1874, designed by Cassuco, an Italian architect; the Military Hospital, inspired by the S. Rafael Hospital in 1874, in Brussels (see Figure 10), and designed by the Baron of Cercal, a Macanese from the local elite; and the Bela Vista Hotel. These were institutions of colonial administration and social control, developed by the centralised state in the metropolitan society and transplanted to the colonies, appearing as built form in the city - the prison, the lunatic asylum, the hospital and the Chamber of Commerce - bringing with them "new categories of consciousness and a new social and moral order" (King, 1990:33).

These buildings were mostly built in privileged locations within the city and were clear expressions of a luxurious neo-classical romantic fantasy as well as of a nostalgic colonial presence.

MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN MACAO

Fig. 8 - Guia Chapel and Lighthouse.

Fig. 9 - Military Club.

In the heart of the city, the opening and the consequent expropriations of the Avenue Almeida Ribeiro6 were a somewhat haussmanian imposition by the government that caused a great deal of social and political controversy. On one hand, the new Avenue cut across the maze of alleys of the Chinese Bazaar, 7 dividing it, cutting it in two (see Figure 11). This caused much protest from the Chinese population. On the other hand, connecting the Praia Grande, the core of the colonial system in Macao, to the Bazaar, the core of the Chinese business, sparked much criticism from Portuguese colonial officers. The criticism at that time by the great majority of the Portuguese was rather more related to a western notion of technological progress and to the scientific quality of urban planning as a quantifiable and measurable device in the process of modernising and beautifying the city.

The first concrete buildings, mostly private houses or small mansions, were built in Macao in the early 1900's. Even if set at a certain distance from the paradigms and paradoxes of the 'new' Modern and International architecture and the European debates centred on the new technological, social and political programmes generated after the first World War (the 'War to end all wars'), the private house (the bourgeois single family residence with a garden attached) was in Macao the main vehicle through which innovations, mostly at a technological level, were introduced at the periphery (see Figure 12).

These houses were clearly still 'social representations of a luxurious production of pleasure and desire' (Vicente, 1982:15-16). They were typically reproductions, not only of metropolitan forms, but also of imperial forms, transported from other peripheral cities of other 'colonial systems,' which were then considered to be metropolitan cores within the periphery, and thus incorporated into a larger and global trans-imperial and trans-colonial network.

Fig. 10 - São Januário Military Hospital (1880 approximately). In Figueira and Marreiros. 1983: 216.

Fig. 11 - Avenida Almeida Ribeiro.

Amongst these houses, the Tseng Kwai Lu house on Hospital Street (see Figure 12), designed by the Portuguese architect Rebello de Andrade, represented a shift from the symbolic to the functional and technological reproduction of colonial metropolitan architecture. This was achieved mainly through attention to specific climate conditions, evident in the arcade and the recessed façades - which were the first 'air conditioned' architectural devices - and the creation of interior cross-ventilation in the whole house.

The emergence in the colonial city in the 1930's of modernism or modem architecture (see Figure 14) was not the expression of a break with the past, but of a shift from romantic symbolism to technological rationalism, within the tradition of colonialist reproduction and representation of metropolitan forms (see Figure 15).

Modern town planning and legislation were still mainly a means of social and cultural control. The institutions of colonialism and their architectural forms that were built during this period were also conspicuous technological and social reproductions and representations of the rational, western, modem principles of sun, light and air (see Figure 17). These technological changes in the modes of production were important means of the further perpetration of western imperial and colonial notions of civilisation.

The local Portuguese, Macanese and/or Chinese engineers, draughtsmen and self-proclaimed artists were the ones who, through a rather more pragmatic approach to the built environment, established a more radical technological reproduction and representation of the new metropolitan forms and norms of the modem and international style (see Figure 16). They were the designers of many of the colonial institutions of modernism that were built during the 1940's and 1950's in Macao.

The public buildings and social housing programmes of the government in the 1950's were also instrumental in perpetrating the shifts from the romantic and symbolic to the rational and technological that were imbedded in colonial and imperial modernism.

Fig. 12-Casa Tseng Kwai Lu (1920). In Figueira and Marreiros. 1983:228.

Fig. 13 - Casa Branca, former Convent of the Precious Blood, currently home to the Monetary Authority of Macao. (Approx. 1997)

Whilst colonial buildings, such as the Administration Headquarters and schools that were key in maintaining the colonial status quo, were designed by the Overseas Ministry at the core of the colonial system, public housing was mainly designed by Ernesto Freire, who was a senior draughtsman at the Public Works Department (PWD).

At the beginning of the 1960's, architects from the Overseas Ministry at the metropolis started to come to Macao to work for the government. Among these architects were Manuel Vicente (see Figure 18), José Maneiras, Natália Gomes, Henrique Mendia, João Fernandes and Jorge Silva. Some of the most significant modern colonial buildings built in the 1960's were still designed at the imperial core by the architect Chorão Ramalho. Amongst these were the Pedro Nolasco High School, the Avé Maria Kindergarten (see Figure 19) and some private houses for the highest-ranking employees of the colonial hierarchy in Macao.

Though the modernist movement in Europe was already in decline, these architects brought with them completely new modes of production and new representations of town planning and metropolitan forms. Much of the public housing and urban planning that was carried out in the 1960's, though already quite different both in the form and culture of production, still carried the colonial tradition of reproducing and representing the social, economic, political and cultural dimensions of the metropolitan core.

By the end of 1966, the Chinese riots in Macao had compelled the colonial modes of production to be adapted to the new realities of the spread of the Cultural Revolution and the teachings of Chairman Mao in China, which had become a new sort of Asian colonialism.

Even after the Democratic Revolution in Portugal in 1974, the de-colonisation of western centres, and the advent of post-modern modes of production, in our time (and in Macao) a tradition that is linked to the social, economic, political and cultural systems of the colonialism and globalism still prevails.

Fig. 14 - Architect Mitchell Greig. Guillien house (Skyline Dwelling).

Fig. 15 - Luso-Chinese School, 1939. In Figueira and Marreiros. 1983: 213.

The buildings designed and built in Macao in the 1980s and 1990s (most of which were designed by Portuguese architects with degrees primarily from Lisbon, such as Adalberto Tenreiro, António Bruno Soares, Carlos Marreiros, Helena Pinto, Manuel Vicente and Vicente Bravo) show the influence of post-modernism, neo-classicism, deconstructivism and neorationalism, among other western stylistic and ideological movements (see Figures 20 and 21). Nonetheless, they do still carry on this very same tradition of transplanting cultures, modes of production and construction, and styles, that preceded (in more ways than one) the universality of the global village that we now enjoy at home, through the global network of computers.

Translated from the Portuguese by PHILOS - Comunicação Global, Lda. www.philos.pt

Fig. 16-Grand Hotel.

Fig. 17 - Tribunal de Competência Genérica (old Government Palace).

Fig. 18 -Architect Manuel Vicente. Helen Liang Kindergarten.

Fig. 19 - Architect Chorão Ramalho. Avé-Maria Kindergarten.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

A/U China Architecture and Urbanism (1996), World Trade Centre of Macao, Hong Kong, no. 2/96, February, pp.58-61.

Andrade, A., Figueira, F. and Calvão, J. (1981), Património Arquitectónico de Macau (Macao's Architectural Heritage), Macau: Comissão de Defesa do Património Urbanistico, Paisagistico e Cultural de Macau (Macao Committee for the Protection of Architectural, Natural, and Cultural Heritage). Arquitectura: revista mensal (Architecture: monthly magazine) (1932), Carlos Rebelo de Andrade, Lisbon, no. 24, April, p.138.

Arrimar, J. (1994), "Fontes para a História de Macau" (Sources for the History of Macao), in Review of Culture, Macao, no. 19 (2nd series), April-June, pp. 120-130.

Artis: revista de arte (Artis: art magazine) (1978),"The Casa Garden", Macao, no. 1, October, pp.4-5.

Basto da Silva, B. (1992), Cronologia da História de Macau: séculos XVI-XVI (Chronology of the History of Macao: 16th-17th centuries), vol. 1, Macao: Direcção dos Serviços de Educação.

Basto da Silva, B. (1993), Cronologia da História de Macau: século XVIII (Chronology of the History of Macao: 18th century), vol. 1, Macao: Direcção dos Serviços de Educação.

Beltrão Coelho, R. (1989), Álbum/Macau/1844-1974 (Album/Macao/1844-1974), Macao: Fundação Oriente.

Beltrão Coelho, R. and Jorge, C. (1993), Álbum/Macau-3: Sítios, Gentes e Vivências (Album/Macao-3: Places, Peoples and Ways of Life), Macao: Livros do Oriente.

Briggs, T. and Crisswell, C. (1984), Old Macao. Hong Kong: South China Morning Post.

Calado, M., Mendes, M. and Toussaint, M. (1985), Macao: memorial city on the estuary of the Pearl River. Lisbon: Consortium Partex (CPS), Tomás Taveira.

Calado, M. (1987),"Macau: História local e desenvolvimento urbano" (Macao: Local history and urban development), in Arquitectura Portuguesa (Portuguese Architecture), Lisbon, no. 12 (5th series), December-January, pp.20-31.

Conceição Júnior, A. (1978),"The city's face", in Artis: revista de arte, Macao, no. 1, October, pp.8-9.

Costa, M. (1988),"Testemunhos demolidos da história" (Demolished Testimonies of History), in Macau, Macao, no. 12, pp.24-28.

Figueira, F. and Marreiros, C. (1988), Património arquitectónico: Macao cultural heritage, Macao: Instituto Cultural de Macau.

Gonzaga Gomes, L. (1966), Páginas da história de Macau (Pages from the History of Macao), Macao: Notícias de Macau.

Graça, J. (1986), Fortificações de Macau, concepção e história, Macao: Instituto Cultural, transl. of Fortifications of Macao: their design and history, (1969) Macao: Imprensa Nacional.

Guillén-Nunez, C. (1986),"Buildings from Macao's past" in Arts of Asia, Hong Kong, no. 16, January - February, pp.66-71.

HKMA, (1983), Scenes of Two Cities: Hong Kong and Macau, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Museum of Art.

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King, A. (1989), Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World - Economy: Cultural and Spatial Foundations of the World Urban System, London: Routledge.

Fig. 20 - Finance Building. Architect António Bruno Soares.

Ljungstedt, A. (1992), An historical sketch of the Portuguese settlement in China and of the Roman catholic church and mission in China, Hong Kong: Viking Hong Kong Publications, reprint of the 2nd edition, 1836, Boston: James Munroe and Co. (1st edition, 1832).

Marreiros, C. (1984),"As falsas fachadas" (The false façades), in Nam Van, Macao, no. 2, July, pp.29-32.

Marreiros, C. (1987),"Traces of Chinese and Portuguese architecture", in Cremer, R. (ed.), Macau: City of Commerce and Culture, Hong Kong: UEA Press.

Mendes, C. (1987),"Macau: Dinâmica económica e estrutura espacial" (Macao: Economic Dynamics and Spatial Structure), in Arquitectura Portuguesa, Lisbon, no. 12 (5th series), December-January, pp.32-43.

Montalto de Jesus, C. (1990), Macau Histórico, Macao: Livros do Oriente, transl. of Historic Macao, 2nd edition, (1926) Macao: Salesian Press; 1st edition (1902) Historic Macau, Hong Kong: Kelly and Walsh.

Prescott, J. (1993), Macaensis Momentum, A Fragment of Architecture: A moment in the history of the development of Macau, Macao: Hewell Publications.

Said, E. (1993), Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures, London: Vintage.

Said, E. (1994), Culture and Imperialism, London: Vintage.

Silva Mendes, M. (1929),"Impressões e recordações de Macau" (Impressions and Memories of Macao), in Jornal de Macau, Macao, no. 87, November, pp.1-2.

Tam, C. K. (1994),"The Sino- Portuguese dispute over the sovereignty of Macao", in Review of Culture, Macao, no. 19 (2nd series), April-June, pp.80-88.

Távora, F. (1983), "Evolução Urbana" (Urban Evolution), in "Plano de intervencao urbanistica da Av. Almeida Ribeiro" (Plan for the urban intervention in Av. Almeida Ribeiro), Oporto, pp.1-7.

Tcheong-ü Lain and Ian-Kuong-Iâm (1751) Ou-Mun Kei-Leok, transl. by Gonzaga Gomes, L. (1979) Ou-Mun Kei-Leok." Monografia de Macau (Monograph of Macao), Macao: Quinzena de Macau.

Teixeira, M., Padre (1977),"The Catholic Churches of Macau", in Arts of Asia, Hong Kong, no. 1, January- February, pp.34-42.

VIA LATINA (1991), Forum for the Discussion of Ideas, D. G. A. A. C. (Coimbra Students' Association), Coimbra, no. 3, May 1991.

Vicente M. (1982), "Macau: a arquitectura da cidade" (Macao: the architecture of the city), in Sábado, Macao, no. 22, September, pp.14-23.

Vicente, M., Graça Dias, M. and Rezende, H. (1991), Macau gloria: a glória do vulgar/The glory of trivia, Macao: Instituto Cultural.

Wong, S. (1970), Macau architecture: an integrate of Chinese and Portuguese influences, Macao: Imprensa Nacional.

Fig. 21 - Museum works at S. Paulo ruins. Architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça.

 

NOTES

 

1 Between 1625 and 1664, Manuel Bocarro had cannon forged in his small plant in Macao, for the walls and fortresses of the city and for China. Later on, the Senate offered one of these cannon (forged in 1627) to the Viceroy of Canton. Following the capture of the city in 1841, this cannon was taken by the English and then transported to the Tower of London (Montalto de Jesus, 1992: 83). Though in a very incipient stage, this peripheral production played its role in the global development of a world economic capitalist space, where assets were transferred from the peripheries to the centre for consumption and consequent reproduction. (King, 1990: 4).

2 Silva Mendes was a colonial official who came to Macao as a teacher at the turn of the century. His description strikes me as evidence of the tranquility experienced in the ability to recognise a colonial landscape far from the centre, the motherland.

3 Manuel Vicente quoted the words of Silva Mendes, published in 1929, in an article he wrote to Sábado, a weekly magazine published by the government of Macao. From the 1880's onwards, there was aspurt of economic growth that caused a large part of the old, traditional colonial urban fabric to virtually disappear. Vicente further reports transgressions and distortions in the transportation, importation and implementation of a colonial architecture which would give rise to one of the most important cultural aspects of collective identity, luxurious pleasure and imperial nostalgia, among other things.

4 See King, A. (1989), Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World-Economy: Cultural and Spatial Foundations of the World Urban System, London, Routledge.

5 The theatre also acted as a programmatic source for the exhibition, consumption and reproduction of colonial world culture. This was a type of building that encouraged racial and social segregation. European and Macanese sat in the main hall to watch the shows, while Chinese could only view them from backstage. This social role of theatres and movies seems to have been a general idea, more or less accepted. Actually, some plans submitted to government in the 30's include drawings that refer to this racial segregation.

6The first name chosen (at least desired by some and rejected by others) for the highway that would become the most modem and the most beautiful avenue of Macao, was that of Colonel Nicolau Mesquita, the hero of Passaleão, saviour of the colony's honour and of the Portuguese Empire's sovereignty in Macao following the murder of Ferreira do Amaral, the Governor of Macao, in the 1840's.

7 Fernando Távora stated that the "opening of the Avenida Almeida Ribeiro links two rather different areas of the city, cutting through the hill that had previously separated the Portuguese section from the Chinese section" (Távora, 1983: 6). Also, according to a Chinese legend, the peninsula of Macao is a part of a big dragon that includes a part of the province of Guangdong, and the opening of the avenue cut the dragon's tail. For further information on legends and superstitions of Macao, see Gonzaga Gomes (1951) and Ortet (1988).

* Architecture Degree from FAUTL (Faculty of Architecture of Technical University of Lisbon) in 1988. Post graduation from the Bartlett School of Architecture & Planning, of University College London in History of Modem Architecture, in 1994, with the dissertation "Architecture and Colonialism in Macao". He works in various ateliers in Lisbon, London and Macao, where he co-operates with the Atelier OBS. He won several prizes with his works, some of which have been published, among which we highlight the 1st Prize for the Macao Pavilion in Expo '98.

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