Headquarters of the Banco de Moçambique
The headquarters of the Banco de Moçambique (Portuguese Sede do Banco de Moçambique ), historically often also called the seat of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino (Portuguese Sede do Banco Nacional Ultramarino ), is located on Avenida 25 de Setembro 1695 in the central Baixa district of Mozambique Capital Maputo . The building complex designed by José Gomes Bastos (1914–1991) was opened in 1964 and has since served as the headquarters of the bank - initially for the Colonial Bank, Banco Nacional Ultramarino , and after Mozambique's independence, for the newly created central bank, Banco de Moçambique .
history
In the course of the settlement and urbanization of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique (1950s – 1970s) by European immigrants, the need to set up new and representative branches for the Banco Nacional Ultramarino (BNU) in the colonial area grew . The BNU was the only Portuguese bank that had a license to issue banknotes in the Portuguese colonies. The banknote issues have been printed in the Escudo system at BWC and TDLR since 1914 . In addition, the BNU acted as the financial administration of the colony in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique and was the most important commercial bank in this administrative area.
Planning and construction
For the designs of the new commercial buildings, the administration of the BNU primarily selected architects who could demonstrate a strong connection to Mozambique. This was intended to promote local architectural offices and artists in particular. In 1954, the bank's administration invited the architect José Gomes Bastos to submit a design for the new construction of the capital's branch in Lourenço Marques.
Bastos submitted a first draft in 1954/55, in the course of which it became clear that the building site had to be expanded. In 1957 Bastos signed the contract with the BNU, so that from 1958 the site could be leveled. Construction work on the new building began in late 1958 / early 1959. The young architect Marcos Miranda Guedes supported Bastos in the design of the bank building. Originally, the latter was also supposed to take over the construction supervision of the construction site - but this did not happen in the end because the bank decided not to supervise construction for reasons of cost.
The opening of the headquarters took place on July 25, 1964 after five years of construction. Present were the President Américo Tomás , the Minister for Overseas António Augusto Peixoto Correia , who had recently been appointed Governor General of the colony, José Augusto da Costa Almeida, and the Archbishop of Maputo.
construction
Bastos designed the new bank building as a building complex in the form of a "rectangular" ring with three street fronts to today's Avenida 25 de Setembro (formerly Avenida da República ), Rua Consiglieri Pedroso and a small side street (today Rua do Banco ). The street front to Avenida 25 de Setembro - with seven floors above the entrance - is the highest front of all and is also the most architecturally independent. The contrast between the glazed entrance and the brise-soleils on the floors above give the street front a particularly representative appearance.
The street front to Rua Consiglieri Pedroso - two floors facing the street, with six set back floors - forms the transition between the relatively tall buildings (seven to ten floors) built on Avenida 25 de Setembro to the much smaller development in the colonial old town the Rua Consiglieri Pedros and Rua Bagamoyo.
The building complex has a wide, open atrium, which virtually represents the center of the complex. In addition to the public bank areas and the offices for the bank employees (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 8th floor), the building also received apartments for employees on the 6th and 7th floors, a social counseling service on the 6th floor Health station and a "play room" (Centro Lúdico) on the 5th floor. In its entirety, Bastos created a small banking microcosm.
Art under construction
At the invitation of José Gomes Bastos, various artists contributed to the building in an artistic way:
- Querubim Lapa , with a polychrome ceramic panel at the entrance
- Manuela Madureira , with three bronze statues hung in the entrance hall to Avenida 25 de Setembro
- Estrela Faria , with a design for the re-use of Murano glass for the cylindrical staircase
- Francisco Relógio , with a wall-filling marble inlay in the main entrance on the ground floor, showing the conquest of Tangier by the Portuguese (1471)
- Rolando Sá Nogueira , with an oil painting on the 3rd floor
In 1962, with the support and advice of José Gomes Bastos, the bank organized an art competition with the aim of designing the southwest wall in the entrance hall. Jorge Garizo do Carmo won the competition ; Furthermore, murals by the artists João Aires , Dana Michahelles , Araújo Soares , João Paulo and José Padua were placed in the individual offices. Paintings by Bertina Lopes and Malagantana Valente were hung in the social counseling on the 6th floor .
style
When designing the new bank building, José Gomes Bastos oriented himself towards two different architectural trends of modernism: The main building corresponds to the New Objectivity style with its functionality, the balance of individual building materials and the strict formalism . The two main facades - to Avenida 25 de Setembro and Rua Consiglieri Pedro - correspond to the modernism of the 1950s and 1960s. With the main façades, the design of Bastos was adapted to the other buildings in the colonial capital that were built at the time.
As a whole, the building served as a symbol of "civilization", "urbanization" and "modernization" of the colony, in keeping with the ideological expression of the colonialism of the Estado Novo .
Changes
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The building has served as the headquarters of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique since it opened. After the Carnation Revolution in Portugal on April 25, 1974 and the end of the Portuguese colonial war , the independent People's Republic of Mozambique was proclaimed on June 25, 1975 . As early as May 17, 1975, the Banco de Moçambique, the central bank of the new country, was created, which now completely took over the business of the BNU. Accordingly, the new central bank also moved into the building designed by Bastos.
Practically no changes were made to the structure, so that the building is still very close to its original state. The building is not a listed building, but is listed in the Portuguese monument database Sistema de Informação para o Património Arquitectónico , which also includes works by former Portuguese colonies, under the number 31679.
With the rapidly growing economy - particularly due to the explored gas and coal reserves in northern Mozambique - as well as increasing regional integration in southern Africa - with the plan to introduce a common SADC currency - the desire to expand the bank's premises grew. For this reason, the central bank demolished the empty Casa Coimbra department store next to the bank building in 2012 and began building two tall office towers. The new headquarters of the bank has been completed and occupied since 2018, but the old headquarters are still in use.
Web links
- Description of the structure on HPIP.org (port.)
- Photos of the structure under construction
- Photos of the structure from the 1960s
- Photos of the interior design
Individual evidence
- ↑ Albert Pick et al .: Standard Catalog of World Paper Money, General Issues, Vol. II, 7th Edition, pp. 866-869 ISBN 0-87341-207-9
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Ana Tostões (ed.): Arquitetura Moderna em África: Angola e Moçambique . 1st edition. Caleidoscópio, Lisbon 2014, ISBN 978-989-658-240-1 , p. 238 ff .
- ↑ Tiago Lourenço: Edifício do Banco Nacional Ultramarino (BNU) / Edifício do Banco de Moçambique. In: Sistema de Informação para o Património Arquitectónico (SIPA). 2011, accessed May 27, 2017 (Portuguese).
- ↑ José dos Remédios: Obras “faraónicas” em tempos de crise. In: O País. June 9, 2016. Retrieved May 27, 2017 (Portuguese).
- ↑ Era uma vez a Casa Coimbra! In: macua.blogs.com. March 25, 2012, Retrieved August 6, 2016 (Portuguese).
Coordinates: 25 ° 58 ′ 22.1 ″ S , 32 ° 34 ′ 11.5 ″ E