Fernão Lopes Simões de Carvalho was born on 27 October 1929 in Luanda, Angola. He was educated at the Salvador Correia grammar school in the former colonial capital until he was 14, when he moved to Lisbon. In Lisbon, he studied architecture at the School of Fine Arts in the period when it was still very much under the influence of Cristino da Silva, who was critical of the Modern Movement. After finishing his studies in 1955, Simões de Carvalho had plans to complete his training in Paris, where he was to come into contact with Le Corbusier. Before that, in 1955-56, he interned at the Overseas Urban Planning Office with the architects João Aguiar and Lucínio Cruz, who were two central figures in that state body, which planned the main public works projects in the Portuguese colonies (urban plans, schools, hospitals, administrative buildings...). 

Simões de Carvalho was to be the third Portuguese architect to come into contact with Le Corbusier after the sojourns in Paris by Vasco Vieira da Costa and Nadir Afonso in the late 1940s. He was also the only one from the Lisbon school to do so. In 1956 he began working in the firm of André Wogenscky, who was responsible for the final designs of the Franco-Swiss master. He was hired to work specifically on the Unité d’Habitation in Berlin. He stayed there until 1959, giving him the opportunity to be involved in some of the firm’s important projects, such as the La Tourette Monastery and the Brazilian Pavilion on the University of Paris campus, for which he was architecte de chantier. It was also during this period that he became acquainted with the Modulor system, which he was later to use frequently in his projects. He prepared his thesis, on a Television Centre, in the French capital and London and defended it in Lisbon in 1957, receiving 19 points (out of 20). Parallel to this he studied urbanism at the prestigious Institut d’Urbanisme at the Sorbonne, where one of the leading figures was Robert Auzelle, whose principles in opposition to the tabula rasa of the Charter of Athens were to have great influence on his work when he returned to Luanda in 1960.

In Angola, Simões de Carvalho’s calling as an urban planner manifested itself almost immediately, working for both the Corimba Urban Planning and Tourism Commission (master and general urban plans for Futungo de Belas, 1960-1962) and the Provincial Board for the Agricultural Settlement of Vale do Bengo (1960-1963). In 1961, he set up the Luanda City Council Urban Planning Office, with himself as the director. Leading a team that was to have up to eight architects, three engineers, a topographer, an artist, ten drawers and a model builder, in addition to the administrative personnel, he drew up the Master Plan for Luanda and some 100 partial plans. While he worked at the council (until 1966), Simões de Carvalho did not simultaneously practise freelance architecture, as he advocated a regime of exclusivity for civil servants.

An advocate of modern architecture, he essentially saw himself as a “technician”, a position that enabled him to distance himself artistically and ideologically from the International Style. However, his designs from his “African period” – the first phase of a career that spanned three continental territories (Africa, Brazil and Portugal) –, most of which were built in the Angolan capital and neighbouring regions, reflect a refined mastery of the modern language, with a particular betón brut influence, which can clearly be traced back to Wogenscky. During the 1960s he built a number of noteworthy buildings in Angola, in which he reworked a repertoire of Corbusian tonality. This is the case of the six country homes for the indigenous population in Quilunda (1960-1963), located next to the Quiminha Dam. Here he reproduced some of Le Corbusier’s ideas in the continuous vaulted roof, a feature normally associated with the specific demands of tropical regions.

From the same period, but in Luanda, are, amongst others, the Cazenga Chapel (1962-1964) and Care Complex (social centre, health centre, crèche and kindergarten, 1963-1965), where he experimented with solutions derived from the specificity of the local climate, designing spaces with crossed ventilation and making abundant use of grid work. He also designed the Caputo market (1962-1965), where the concrete is given a more sculptured aspect through the modelled roof. Applying the knowledge developed while writing his thesis, from 1963 to 1967 Simões de Carvalho worked on what can be considered the most important work in this phase: the Luanda Radio Broadcasting Centre, which demonstrates a high degree of maturity in the use of raw concrete. The centre is still in use today.

He also dedicated himself to large residential plans, such as the fisherman’s village of 500 dwellings on the island of Luanda (1963-1966), currently imperceptível, which he designed with José Pinto da Cunha. With Pinto da Cunha and Fernando Alfredo Pereira, he designed the collective housing blocks for the Unidade de Vizinhança no. 1 in the Prenda neighbourhood in 1963-1965 (approx. 1,150 apartments). In this area of Luanda he proposed a racial mixture that was unprecedented in the colonial cities of the period, as it went against the then current trend of marginalising the native community by forcing it to remain outside the boundaries of the formal city. It was near this neighbourhood that he built his own house (1966), which he was to occupy for only a short time. But he was also to leave important projects not completed. One large scale project that was not built was the Luanda autodrome, which he designed together with the engineer Manuel Travassos Valdez (1966-1967).

Back in Lisbon again, he joined the city’s Housing Office, where worked between 1967 and 1975, on the condition that he could go to Angola every six months. He thus continued to design for the former colony, either alone (municipal plan for a park, Cabinda, 1967-1968; four houses for Portuguese Post Office (CTT) workers, Sumbe 1970) or in collaboration with others, e.g. with Joaquim António Lobo de Carvalho (CTT buildings in Cabinda and Silva Porto, both from 1969-1970, and the Luanda Faculty of Medicine, 1969).

Simões de Carvalho’s second phase in his career took him to Rio de Janeira, after the revolution of 1974 as there was a lack of work in Portugal, given that most of his clients depended on the Angolan economy and the colonial structure. The choice of Brazil as a professional destination was shared by other architects who had worked in the colonies, such as Pinto da Cunha. They found support in the Portuguese community already established there. 

Simões de Carvalho joined the firm of Horácio Camarga based in Tijuca, Rio and he immediately submitted a design for the Brazilian Marine Corps Naval School in Rio in 1976. Before returning to Portugal in October 1979, he also designed projects for Vitória, Pelotas and Maricá. While he preferred planning work, he also produced architectural designs, where once again his option for raw concrete showed: the remodelling of the Brazilian Marine Corps Headquarters (Ilha das Cobras, 1976); the Marine Corps Amphibian Division and Command Battalion building (Ilha do Governador, 1976); the dog showroom for the Kennel Club (Campos, 1979) and the apartment building for Dr. António Gomes da Costa in Rio’s Tijuca district (1976-1978). In the field of urban planning, he teamed up with Maurício Roberto for the competition for the integrated plan for Caji, a support park for the Camarçari industrial site in the state of Bahia (1977-1979). They won the competition. And for the Odebrecht company he developed the plan for the town of Vilas do Atlântico (1979), 25 kilometres form São Salvador. The plan was carried out.

Once again in Portugal, Simões de Carvalho began work on completing his house in Queijas, which he had left unfinished when he left for Rio. The house represents a synthesis of his African work, emphasising the sculptural importance he attributes to concrete. In a pragmatic approach, perceptible in his whole career, the house is divided into various levels that make full use of the sloping site and maximise the floor space. The house is marked by a gate that almost looks like an homage (even if involuntary) to the pop culture that established itself in Portugal in the 1970s. In Lisbon he was responsible for several urban buildings such as the Ministry of Agriculture (Areeiro, 1980-1983), the Hotel Continental (1985-1987) and the São José Psychiatric Clinic run by the religious order Irmãs Hospitaleiras do Sagrado Coração de Jesus (Telheiras, 1983-1995). The complex’s chapel, in particular, reworks Corbusian themes. He taught design at the School of Fine Arts in Lisbon from 1979 to 1995 and witnessed the school’s conversion into the School of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon. He also worked as advisor for Urban Planning and Building Planning to Lisbon City Council. Today he still works on designs in his studio the installed in his house in Queijas, while he waits for his return to Africa to complete the work he left unfinished.|