Praise of the Ordinary/Extraordinary

On the Valorisation of Experimental Buildings from the 1940s-1950s in Macau

The present essay proposes a critical reflection on the emergence of embryonic architectural modernity in Macau between the 1940s and 1950s, focusing on modern experimental and Art Deco examples that served as genuine laboratories for the subsequent modern era. Our proposal brings together uncommon historical grounds, with particular emphasis on the work of João Canavarro Nolasco and Aureliano Guterres Jorge, local Portuguese-trained engineers, and questions the status of ordinary/extraordinary housing structures that are thereby excluded from canonical heritage narratives. 

Several punctual projects, which contributed substantially to the shaping of Macau’s mid-twentieth-century architectural identity, have been replaced by the growing urban scenarios or simply forgotten. Most of these cases remain insufficiently documented, pointing to the inherently fragmentary nature of the archival record for this period and its attention, in which certain buildings are preserved only through limited private photographic fragments.

Our proposal, aligned with the thematic axis of heritage in transition, seeks to foreground the silent narratives embedded in the everyday built environment; those marginalized projects that rarely enter official historiography yet profoundly illuminate the social and cultural dynamics that we claim are worthy of preservation for future generations. By shifting attention away from spectacular architectural manifestos toward the incremental, often invisible, processes through which ordinary/extraordinary buildings vanish, we aim to expose the shifting hierarchies of value that structure the contemporary heritage discourse. To valorize a period that embodies a transitional moment in which cultural, stylistic and technical shifts converged, we aim to provide a critical lens on demolished/forgotten architectural memories, the results of unprecedented urban expressions in the Macanese and Asian context.

In order to understand the degrees of complexity of the modern architecture established in Macau during the 1940s and 1950s, it is necessary to undertake a parallel broader socio-political context. This epoch, characterized by the intensification of colonial relations, following the introduction of GUC’s large equipment projects of the early decades of the 20th century (Gabinete de Urbanização do Ultramar - Portuguese Overseas Ministry) techniques, and ideas, anticipating somehow what would later be designated as internationalisation. Territorial concessions, such as Macau, across the world functioned as particularly fertile contact zones, where local building traditions, colonial heritage, and international references intersected simultaneously and, often, experimentally¹.

The conditions of cultural exchange and the 20th-century mobility conditions had profound impacts on architectural production. As Adolf Loos observed, unlike art, frequently associated with the "fast time" of the avant-garde movements, architecture has been historically linked to a "slower time", connected to permanence, building tradition, and cultural sedimentation. Modernity reshapes this temporal balance by intensifying the international circulation of architectural models and their interpretation transforming the discipline itself into a field increasingly permeable to the speed of ideas and the global diffusion of formal and technical repertoires².

It is precisely at this turning point that the production of João Canavarro Nolasco and Aureliano Guterres Jorge in Macau is inscribed. Local engineers, trained within a Portuguese cultural context, besides their involvement in large public infrastructure processes, confront the Asian region with small local practices. Their materialized personal attempts, applying a relatively recent interpretation of modern architecture, alongside the accelerated urban growth of the region, remained noiselessly neglected in relevant architectural contexts³.

Some of the author’s demolished or still-standing projects, which rarely entered official historiography, profoundly illuminate the social, political, and cultural dynamics of Macau and Asian architecture. Through image-based analysis, hidden photographs, and records, we reclaim visual archives as analytical tools; we seek not merely to document loss but to articulate the living consequences of erasure, demonstrating how the disappearance of these architectures exposes broader tensions in the definition of cultural values and calls for a more inclusive understanding of architectural unfamous heritage that deserves further consideration.

How guidelines could be interpreted and adapted to a specific tropical context and its climatic, social, and cultural conditions?

The response to this challenge did not occur through a simple transposition of models, but rather through processes of adaptation, translation, and experimentation that characterise what would come to be identified as modern architecture in the tropics. In Macau, these strategies are manifested in the incorporation of environmental and spatial devices that became part of the tropical modern vocabulary: pergolas, brise-soleil, perforated concrete blocks (akin to what in Brazil would become known as cobogó), sun-shading screens, oversized canopies for the rains, large fenestration, verandas, courtyards, patios and cross-ventilation solutions. Rather than mere technical elements, such devices reveal an attempt to reconcile formal abstraction with tangible reassessments, being part of a process of negotiation between climate, operational urban context, technique and everyday life.

In this sense, many of the buildings produced between the 40s  and 50s can be understood as discrete laboratories of architectural experimentation. Frequently anonymous or little celebrated by historiography, these projects operate on an apparently ordinary scale, residential buildings, modest amenities, utilitarian constructions, yet reveal, precisely in this condition, an extraordinary field of investigation into the seamless adaptation of the Modern in peripheral contexts.

By documenting and sharing material about these experimental buildings, often at the margins of the canonical narratives of modern architecture, it becomes possible to recognise the importance of a production that, while apparently banal, played a fundamental role in the reformulation of every urban scenario. The praise of the ordinary, in this context, allows the extraordinary to be revealed: the capacity of these buildings to incorporate multiple temporalities and environmental adaptations, contributing to the constitution of a silent narrative of architectural modernity⁴.

As a common denominator, the ordinary presupposes by definition a condition of alterity. That is, it consists of those objects that the discipline of architecture declares to lie outside its territory and against which it defines its boundaries⁵.

What we claim as worthy of preservation for future generations is a reading that allows a shift in the historiographical gaze, usually directed at the great manifestos and canonical works, towards an apparently more modest but equally revealing field. Punctual experimental architectures established in Macau in the 1940s and 1950s, frequently classified as late examples of Art Deco or as hybrid forms of a tropical proto-modernism, constitute, in this sense, a particularly significant laboratory. 

The housing block on Calçada do Paiol (fig. 2) exhibits a highly bilateral symmetrical composition directed by a centralized vertical volume, evoking a sense of restrained monumentality that subtly engages with the representational ambitions of the Portuguese Estado Novo regime. The central mass accommodates vertical circulation and features an infill glass partition that serves as the organizing axis for both the floorplan and the facade. The building demonstrates a pragmatic technical transition, wherein the adoption of the combination of concrete, steel and glass’s autonomy and a rigid structural modulation dictates the arrangement of large window openings and ground-floor entrances. At the same time, the upper-floor balconies introduce discrete cantilevers that soften the geometric stiffness of the building's general face, providing shades and an inbetween modern layer between interior and exterior.

Conversely, the building on Avenida Rodrigo Rodrigues (fig. 3) is characterized by the strong horizontality of its facade, structured through continuous horizontal bands and pronounced linear canopies. Pragmatically, these cantilevered slabs function both as climatic control devices and as visual axes unifying the entire composition. The facade is treated through a rational alternation of solids and voids with the front face horizontal filters, as well as in the second line façade, reinforced by a symmetrical grouping of doors and windows, and a clean parapet termination. This layout underscores a formal simplification geared toward construction economy and the typological clarity of the modern multi-family residential scheme.

Situated in a territory of contact between distinct cultures, climates, and building traditions, these projects reveal early processes of gently adapting the modern vocabulary to specific environmental and social conditions, long before such issues were fully problematised by international architectural criticism.

If, on the one hand, these architectures initially emerge as unusual responses to local demand and circumstances, looking new materials, construction practices, and ways of inhabiting, on the other, they anticipate concerns that would only become central to disciplinary debate in the post-war period. Elements such as free façades, large deliberate fenestration, external corridors, integrated with shading devices, in-between layered spaces and ventilation systems do not merely represent adaptive technical solutions; they also constitute evidence of a negotiation between modern universalism and local reality.

To that extent, the residential complex on Rua da Alfândega (fig. 4) stands out for its stepped and rhythmic volumetric composition, where the repetition of housing modules is unified by a late Art Deco idiom that underscores its transitional character. Pragmatically, the project adopts technical reinforced concrete solutions as evidenced by the pronounced canopies and cantilevered curved balconies that project over the front to the lateral sides till the setback of the building. While maintaining restrained formal monumentality through the centralized vertical volume and symmetrical composition, the project introduces flat usable roofs and curved slabs features surrounding the whole block that work both as a formal and technical element, showcasing the quiet negotiation and introduction of modern forms through past and future formal coherence. The window openings maintain a restrained proportion governed by structural modulation. At the same time, the plastered facade planes and low boundary walls define a clear threshold between the public street realm and the private domestic space; public spaces in-between block’s side are intentionally created in order to extend outside the inhabiting experience and propose a controlled semi-public neighbour scale.

While the housing buildings combination on Rua da Alfândega (fig. 4) gently negotiates with formal geometrical compositions and innovative approaches, the housing block in Rua Madre Terezina (fig. 5) stands with its declared intentions of architectural experimentation in which the modern paradigm, by crossing geographical and cultural boundaries, inevitably transforms.

The building on Rua Madre Terezina (fig. 5) proposes a combination of different geometric matrices and features a robust volume articulated by a textured façade and cylindrical lines that proportionate interior corners to a recessed line of façade and the building entrances. The design proposed balanced curved large fenestrations framed by protruding concrete frames, and small circular windows on the lateral side of the building promoting internal cross-ventilation. The project can interpret a possible adaptation of streamline modern style, as well as a reading of a subset of Art Deco with its smooth curved corners and sleek, recalling the Tiong Bahru neighborhood, built in Singapore by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) led by the British architect Alfred G. Church during the late 1930s. Tropical adaptations as overhangs, rounded lines, recessed openings and interior balconies designed to proportionate cover external areas bring to the overall composition ornamental simplification and consistent volumetric solutions geared toward construction efficiency, rationalization and technical adaptness.

The expression the ordinary […] is proposed as the common denominator of a series of notions related to the appropriation and instrumentalisation of what are termed existing conditions: the banal, the everyday, the found, the popular, the existing landscape⁶.

It is precisely this assorted condition, simultaneously ordinary and experimental, that built the reappraisal of such buildings in light of the critical revisions of modernity that emerged in the European post-war context. From the 1950s onwards, architects and theorists, correlated with Team 10, including Alison and Peter Smithson, began to question the limits of modern orthodoxy, proposing a reconnection between architecture, everyday life, and ordinary forms of inhabiting. In this debate, the common building, the latest urban fabrics, and the seemingly banal recent fragments of the city began to be recognized as legitimate fields of architectural investigation.

In this sense, the housing examples produced in Macau during the previous decades can be reinterpreted not merely as peripheral episodes in the diffusion of Modern characters, but as empirical material that anticipates certain intuitions that the post-war revision would later formulate explicitly. As the Smithsons identified, synthesising poetic and critical potential in the ordinary, while integrating the celebrated statement that architecture should be simultaneously "ordinary and heroic"⁷, these buildings also reveal an extraordinary dimension precisely in their seemingly conventional condition.

In summary, the category of the ordinary includes the architecture that architecture itself excludes⁸.

By observing them from this perspective, it becomes possible to understand that the process of modern revision did not occur solely in European intellectual centres, but also, and often silently, at the geographical margins of the international architectural system. In contexts such as Macau, where architectural modernity confronted directly tropical climates, colonial conditions, and complex social realities, the modern paradigm adapted, negotiated, and transformed itself. These adaptation processes, often invisible in canonical narratives of modern architecture, constitute precisely the ground where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, revealing the capacity of these buildings to operate as mediators between modern universalism and local specificity.

It is from this interpretative key that the present article proposes to look at marginalised spatial disappearances of João Canavarro Nolasco and Aureliano Guterres Jorge in Macau: not only as episodes of diffusion of Modern examples in colonial territories, but also as uncommon cases that help to understand, retrospectively, the limits and transformations of the modern project throughout the 20th century.

The theoretical background sustaining this investigation traces back to a broader critical tradition within modern culture itself, which began to gain shape in the 19th century with the inflections of the Arts and Crafts movement and traversed, with varying intensities, subsequent developments in modern architecture. The valorisation of the everyday, the handcrafted, and ordinary forms of dwelling, initially intentioned as a critique of indiscriminate industrialisation, eventually influenced various developments in 20th-century architectural culture, from Art Deco to later currents of Modernity that sought to bring architecture and daily life closer together. However, it is primarily in the British post-war context that this sensitivity acquired a decisive theoretical formulation, particularly through the work and writings of Alison and Peter Smithson.

In a late 1940s London context, Smithsons formulated one of the most emblematic ideas of the post-war architectural debate: the need for architecture to be, simultaneously, "ordinary and heroic"⁹. Modern heroism was not to reside in isolated monumentality or formal exceptionalism, but in architecture’s capacity to improve the life of the common citizen through technical innovation, industrial production, and the rational organisation of living space. However, as Van den Heuvel highlights, over time the Smithsons’ interest shifted progressively towards the pole of the ordinary, which became the true focus of their architectural investigation. The heroic, as well as the poetic, was to be discovered in the seemingly banal phenomena of everyday life¹⁰.

Still standing projects such as the building in Avenida Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida by Nolasco (fig.6) and the one in Rua das Estalagens by Jorge (figg.7 and 8), made visible the exploration of ground breaking housing orders in Macau, ceasing to be merely a formal or technological exercise and asserted itself as an instrument of urban and social transformation.

Both projects reflect transitional Art Deco building typologies, still imbued with a sense of monumentality that echoes the representational political ambitions of the time. Its apparent symmetries are  subtly disrupted by minor variations, while the use of ribbon windows is explored through geometrical arrangement. Large fenestration openings can be observed within a free scheme linked to a certain restraint in size and distribution, reflecting structural caution or the need to verify the emerging technological capacities of reinforced concrete. In this context, the structural system clearly defines the limits of the openings, contributing to a spatial abstraction that characterizes the composition.

The sinuous character of the Art Deco language is expressed through the horizontal sweep of the external balconies, whose continuous lines reinforce a sense of fluidity across the façade. More broadly, the use of rounded forms, curved corners, softened edges, and streamlined profiles, adapted to the urban characters of its contexts, plays a fundamental role in shaping the architectural identity of the buildings. These elements temper the rigidity of the structural grid, introducing a dynamic interplay between horizontality and curvature that is emblematic of the new/old dialogue of construction techniques. In this context, the rounded geometries are not merely decorative but serve to convey movement, modernity, and a refined sense of plasticity, aligning the composition with the broader aesthetic aspirations of experimentation.

This attention to experimentation in the ordinary implied a significant shift in how modern architecture related to the existing scenario. Rather than producing abstract forms detached from social reality, or political propaganda, it was about recognising the cultural, spatial, and symbolic richness present in everyday practices and common urban structures. As Van den Heuvel notes, the very notion of a "new seeing of the ordinary" is part of a broader modern tradition that had already identified, at various moments, sources of material experimentation and cultural authenticity, sometimes in the vernacular, in the rustic, or in the common, set against the mannerisms of academic elites¹¹. Thus, what might at first glance appear simple or banal revealed itself, in truth, as part of a field of cultural contestation over values, identities, and ways of inhabiting.

Such typologies are commonly found in Macau. As transitional buildings, they are rarely granted heritage status and consequently tend to undergo significant alterations over time. This apparent resilience, sometimes accommodating numerous transformations, as in the case of the Housing Block in Rua Henrique de Macedo by Jorge (figg. 9 and 10), may be attributed to their inherent spatial quality: efficient plan organization and comparatively generous ceiling heights, especially when contrasted with contemporary standards. These attributes position such buildings as fertile grounds for the everyday experimentation of architecture.

The capacity to absorb arbitrary alterations becomes evident where the enclosure of balconies and the proliferation of new fenestrations appear as recurrent interventions. Such buildings, not being encompassed within the strict domain of heritage, effectively constitute open fields for everyday experimentation. In contrast to a logic of urban “museification”¹², the building here remains alive precisely because it is continuously reinterpreted over time.

A certain resilience to misuse or unplanned appropriation, paradoxically, suggest that permanence lies less in formal integrity than in the capacity for adaptation. One may thus posit a link between the ordinary and the extraordinary: not through exceptionality, but through an openness to transformation and continual appropriation.

The sensitivity of appropriation culminated in the formulation of the "As Found" aesthetic, a concept developed by Alison and Peter Smithson within the Team 10 debates and extensively discussed by authors such as Enrique Walker. The term refers to a design attitude that proposes looking at the existing, materials, objects, urban fragments, and common buildings, just as they are found, recognising in them a creative and cultural potential that is often neglected. As Alison Smithson states, the As Found introduces "a new way of seeing the ordinary", opening space for "prosaic things" to revitalise creative activity and nourish new forms of architectural thought¹³. 

By recognising the ordinary as a legitimate source of inspiration¹⁴ and as a possible force for cultural and moral regeneration, the Smithsons established a critical precedent for observing what is already present in the built environment: the common building, the banal detail, the ordinary structures of urban life, as material for both design and history.

It is precisely within this critical lineage that the approach of documentation of forgotten structures adopted in this article is situated. While the attention to the ordinary allows for a reappraisal of everyday architecture as a field for modern experimentation, the analysis of the private works of João Canavarro Nolasco and Aureliano Guterres Jorge in Macau reveals a group of buildings that, though frequently excluded from the monumental canon of modern historiography, play a fundamental role in the adaptation of Modern guidelines to the Macanese context. Situated at the boundary between the need to build and architectural experimentation, these structures materialize processes of cultural and technical translation that make visible what this article proposes to define as the "extraordinarily ordinary" of early modern architecture.

Architecture must be understood not as a fixed or neutral artifact, but as an act of interpretation, of realities, communities, and cultural dynamics that evolve. Both historically and within the contemporary urban condition, the built environment reflects a selective process: certain narratives are emphasized, while others are obscured, suspended, or forgotten. This oscillation between concealment and revelation is not incidental, but intrinsic to the urban growth and architectural practice itself.

The question, then, is not only what we choose to preserve but also what we allow to fade, and why. Equally urgent is the inverse inquiry: what latent conditions, spatial practices, and marginalized environments should be brought back into visibility? Beyond canonical monuments and officially recognized heritage, there exists a vast and often overlooked field of ordinary/extraordinary architectures. These are buildings and places shaped by everyday life, by informal uses, and by dense networks of social relations. Their value does not reside in spectacle but in continuity, adaptability, and lived experience, which bring effective perspectives on the relationship between time, memory, and urban transformation.

By directing attention to these projects, the aim is not to celebrate them uncritically, but to reconsider their design lessons that may offer fertile interpretations for future generations. The recurring fantasy of an idealized world, composed of purist, immaculate buildings, proves incompatible with the complexity of reality; it is therefore everyday life that should constitute the very substance of design. Seemingly discordant elements, such as poorly positioned new openings or the improvised enclosure of balconies, may reveal significant transformations in ways of inhabiting and appropriating space. As such, they should be considered a legitimate field of analysis and inquiry; not as a romanticisation of the ugly or the chaotic, but as an operative approach grounded in reality, in everyday life.

Such “uncommon grounds” of architectural research challenge dominant narratives by revealing alternative histories embedded within the urban fabric. The call for new modes of reading and representation capable of acknowledging what has been neglected, concealed, or rendered invisible, sometimes describes deliberate exclusions in historiographic narratives, sometimes just lack of literature and material. Engaging with these environments is not merely an act of documentation but one of reinterpretation and reintegration.

Revealing these architectures means restoring them to the broader system of urban and cultural relationships from which they derive meaning. It requires expanding the scope of heritage discourse to include the subtle, the everyday, and the socially embedded. Only through this inclusive and critical approach can architecture fully articulate its role as a mediator between past and present, memory and transformation, visibility and omission.