Workers’ housing in Diamang’s mining concession

Models, materials and contestation during Portuguese colonialism

Abstract

Diamang's mining activities in a large concession area in the Lunda district, on the northeastern border of Angola, between the 1910s and the 1980s, entailed the construction of infrastructure at multiple scales, programmes, and contexts. This article analyses the production of housing for the company's workers, including the building models designed and adapted to the territory, the diversity of building materials, and the processes of appropriation and contestation. The article spans several periods of Portuguese colonialism in Africa and challenges the prevailing socio-spatial colonial dichotomies that persist in the present day. In hundreds of villages and settlements inhabited by thousands of workers and their families, mainly from different parts of Angola and Portugal, Diamang attempted to create a corporate “architectural dialect,” but its plans often ran up against the ambivalent urban images expected by the colonial power and the local communities.