The Question
How does architecture insert itself into a city that is still growing, without becoming another static imposition?
Maputo is expanding rapidly, with informal neighbourhoods developing faster than infrastructure can follow. The project asked: what if the architecture grew with the city instead of ahead of it?
The Proposal
The Network is a physical and social infrastructure: a system of modular, evolving structures that connect the morphology of the urban fabric with the communities that inhabit it. Each node is a meeting point, a landmark, a resource. Together they form a network that can extend, adapt, and take root differently in each neighbourhood context.
The project uses local materials as a design constraint rather than a limitation, an investment in the community’s capacity to recognize, maintain, and transform the structures over time.
What We Learned
Urban infrastructure designed as a network rather than a monument can support social life without dominating it. The Network doesn’t claim to solve Maputo. It proposes a framework for incremental, community-shaped growth.
Group project (team of 6). Supervisor: Prof. Maria Chiara Pastore, Politecnico di Milano.
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