Mª Leonor Baeta Neves Cortez Figueira

BIOGRAPHY

Leonor Figueira is a Portuguese architect who worked in Africa under Portuguese colonial rule. She was born on 11 January 1937 in Lisbon and, at the age of 17 (1954), she enrolled in the architecture course at the former Escola de Belas Artes (School of Fine Arts), completing the curricular part in 1960. She presented her final thesis in 1966 with a project for weekend townhouses in Cascais, of an evolutive type. In 1970 she joined the Fundo de Fomento Habitação (FFH) where she developed projects for Sines and Lisbon. In particular, she continued to study the theme of evolutive housing and also self-build. Shortly afterwards (1971) she moved to Mozambique, where she stayed until 1975, going through the revolution and the first interim governments of the independent country. Initially, she settled in Beira, where she worked at GAUD - Gabinete de Arquitectura, Urbanismo e Decoração, a studio run by Julião de Azevedo, Bernardino Ramalhete and Eduardo da Naia Marques, to follow up on ongoing projects, particularly the decoration of commercial spaces. A year later she moved to Lourenço Marques to work with João José Tinoco, where she carried out detailing and furniture design projects as part of the refurbishment work for private commissions. In September 1975, in the context of a strong migratory movement of people leaving the country, she moved to Macao where she stayed for seven years.

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(Leonor Matos Silva, 2024)