Crafting Furniture in the Global South: Portuguese Modern Design and the Contemporary Materialities of the Empire

Crafting a National Identity in an International Market

20 August, 2026 -

“Within us, the timber shortage is enormous. We are completely lacking in timber for packaging – which needs to be light and easy to cut (Picea europea, for example) – as well as timber for joinery, cooperage, among others”. [1]

Modern architecture in Portugal between the 1930s and 1970s made large use of tropical wood, especially for interior and furniture design.[2] Public institutions – like universities, secondary schools and courthouses, among others –, leisure buildings – like theatres, hotels and restaurants –, but also private institutions and middle-class homes were furnished with tropical woods displaced from former territories under the Portuguese rule, and extracted under compulsive labour regimes and unregulated extraction practices. 

Evidence of the materialities of the empire can be traced, for example, in the iconic interiors and furniture of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, largely designed by renowned Portuguese designer Daciano da Costa in 1966, and in the furnishing of public institutions entangled with the colonial economy, like the former Overseas National Bank in Lisbon (today the Museum of Design, MUDE).[3] But also, in the modernist pieces of design people nowadays desire and seek in the second-hand market.

The materiality that is tangible in Portuguese interiors and furniture is not neutral and must be questioned within a broader trans-national, economic and political framework.[4] As well as within an ecological perspective.[5] The reciprocal landscapes revealed in furniture and interior design provide a broader reflection on the trans-imperial and capitalist system of exploitation of people and nature that sustained the colonial economy.[6]

Portugal held the longest dictatorship regime within European countries, maintaining a colonial system until 1975. It ruled over the lands and the indigenous people of Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Angola, Sao Tomé e Principe and Mozambique in Africa, Goa (1961, independence), Timor-Leste and Macau in Southern Asia. 

Due to the expansion of science technology, transport infrastructure and timber processing, by the 1960s tropical forests of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau became extractive ecologies of raw materials, which were largely consumed in Europe and in the design industry.[7] Mozambique was the colony with the greatest variety of wood species exported, counting up to 100 concessionaires working in the timber industry in 1953, located in the regions of Manica, Sofala, Zambezia, Niassa, and Maputo. Guinea-Bissau was rich in Bissilom (Khaya Senegalensis), a timber belonging to the mahogany family and highly sought for furniture. In Angola, wood extraction was concentrated in the Mayombe Forest in the Province of Cabinda, that since the late 1930s became an arena of global supply chain for tropical wood.[8]

Within the Portuguese empire, tropical wood trade relied on colonial and trans-imperial infrastructure of transport networks (railways, roads and ports), and on small-scale private forest concessions which managed labour and lands.[9] Wood was cut into logs or boards in local sawmills, usually located in remote regions, to be then transported and shipped from the main ports of Bissau, Luanda, Ponta Negra, Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) and Beira, to mainland Portugal or sold to major wood consumers and renowned countries of the design industry: Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, South Africa, France and Italy.

In Portugal, the Olaio company was one of the most important firms supplying public institutions with furniture. From the 1940s to the 1970s, many of the models fabricated by Olaio were manufactured in tropical wood. Such was the case of the popular Caravela chair (1960) made of Undianuno timber (Sapele, en.), or the Prefa collection (1961-1965) and the school desk series made of Tola timber (Agba, en.) and designed by renowned designer José Espinho.[10] 

As João Olaio (the great-grandchild of José Olaio, the founder of the company) confirmed in a recent informal interview we had, the most commonly wood species used by the company were Tola (Agba, en.), Mutene (Mutenye, en.), Undianuno (Sapele, en.), Pau Rosa (Rosewood, en.) and Kambala (Iroko, en.). Furniture firms were encouraged to use "national" wood, which comprised tropical timber imported from the colonies, emphasizing the tentacular dimension of the empire. 

Despite fragmentation, the archival records of the Olaio firm reveal the relationship between imperial economy and the design sector. Records contained in a folder called "Woods" shed light on the administrative and financial dimension of the commodification of nature. List of suppliers, wood prices, catalogues, “scientific” manuals on tropical woods containing commercial names and “suitable uses”, pictures of the manufacturing process, among others, bear witness to the site of consumption of tropical forests. 

The relationship between interiors and the extractive economies of empires stretches back centuries. 2000 years ago, Horace condemned the luxury of Roman interiors stating that: “there's no ivory, there's no gilded panelling, gleaming here in my house, no beams of Hymettian marble rest on pillars quarried from the furthest parts of Africa.”[11]

Even though, in most cases, the material legacy of the Portuguese empire remains visible and in everyday use, it is still difficult to trace a direct link between the sites of extraction and the sites of consumption in regard to interiors and furniture. The history of Portuguese design and architecture omitted detailed information on materials, particularly wood, which is referred to as a general category. Historiography has only recently expanded its studies to include building techniques, labour, and materials.[12] 

Through the case study of the Olaio company, I am exploring possible ways to reframe the history of interior and furniture design in light of postcolonial studies and decolonial theory, challenging the Western-centric narrative of post-war design that has minimised the relationship between "modern" design and extractive material ecologies, especially in the Global South.

 

Acknowledgement

This research is funded by the European Union (ERC, ArchLabour, 1101096606). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. Find out more about the ArchLabour project here.

 

Francesca Vita is a post-doctoral researcher at the University Institute of Lisbon (DINÂMIA’CET) within the ERC-project “Architecture, Colonialism and Labour” coordinated by Ana Vaz Milheiro, and an invited lecturer in interior design at the University of the Algarve (Portugal). She holds a PhD in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, which deepens into the topics of colonial legacy and domestic space in contemporary Guinea-Bissau. In 2022, she was awarded with the Eleni Bastea prize (IASTE). Her research interests include the legacy of colonialism in contemporary architecture and urban space, with a particular focus on the materiality of empire, vocational labour and production-construction sites.

 

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