EnglishFormer Facilities of the Companhia de Celulose do Ultramar (non-urban area)
Benguela Railway [towns of Cubal; Alto Catumbela; Chinguar; Camacupa, General Machado], Benguela, Huambo, Bié, Moxico, Angola
Equipment and Infrastructures
Set on Alto Catumbela, extending from the homonymous Benguela Railway, an industrial village completely dependent on the Companhia de Celulose do Ultramar (Overseas Cellulose Company) was built from scratch between 1958-1959. The ensemble was located on the banks of the Catumbela River, midway between Lobito and Huambo (near Ganda). Following a modern plan based on the idea of zoning, it included an industrial area, a leisure area, a residential area and the segregated indigenous quarter. This “small industrial citadel” (along the lines of the primal 18th century Nova Oeiras) was designed by the Habitat Group, in a professional model characteristic of the innovative 1950s and 1960s by the architects Nuno Teotónio Pereira (plan and administration building), Bartolomeu Costa Cabral (plan and housing), Freitas Leal (factory, clinic and church, the later apparently not built), as well as the trainee J. Mesquita de Oliveira. The ensemble, built along modern lines, aimed at being functional and made use of some local resources and materials (for example, in the ceilings of wood and fibre cement), and was built between mid-1958 and late 1959, supervised by the architect Luís Amaral. It suffered serious damage in the recent civil war.