Pancho Guedes

Amâncio d'Alpoim Miranda "Pancho" Guedes (Lisbon, Portugal, 13 May 1925 – Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, 7 November 2015) was a Portuguese architect, sculptor, painter, and educator.

He is described as one of the earliest post-modernist architects in Africa and an archetype Eclectic Modernist.

Early life Guedes was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1925. He is a descendant of Portuguese nobleman Luis de Alpoim.

Guedes spent much of his life in Portuguese Mozambique from the age of 7 years old and he would stay there for most of his life.

Wanting to become an artist, he enrolled at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1945. He soon decided to study architecture which was to him the culmination and combination of all the artistic trades that interested him.

In East Africa he produced the designs for hundreds of buildings, Guedes calls the style of this building STILOGUEDES which translates loosely as 'Style of Guedes'. The high level mural on the West façade is still intact and so is the "smiling lion" on the North corner. The lion is a small concrete casting with a smile hence the name of the building.

Architecture Projects Pancho Guedes designed numerous buildings across Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Eswatini, often noted for their surrealist forms, playful ornamentation, and fusion of modernist and vernacular influences.

Prometheus Apartments (Edifício Prometheus), 1951–1953, Maputo (then Lourenço Marques), Mozambique Smiling Lion Apartments (Leão Que Ri), 1956, Maputo, Mozambique Saipal Bakery, 1954, Maputo, Mozambique Dragon Building (Edifício Dragão), 1951–1953, Maputo, Mozambique Bay Window House, c.1985, Northcliff, Johannesburg, South Africa Service Station, 1961, Komatipoort, South Africa Comendador da Ordem Santiago e Espada,1979 Honorary Doctorate by the University of Pretoria, 1998

Death Pancho Guedes died on 7 November 2015 at the age of 90.

Works Church in Maputo (1962)