MJZ Arquitectos receives prestigious award for The Palm 313, in Chocas beach, Mozambique

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MJZ Arquitectos receives prestigious award for The Palm 313, in Chocas beach, Mozambique

4:27 CAT | 12 Sep 2022

Photo courtesy: MJZ Arquitectos

The award-winning work is a house built in Praia das Chocas, near Nampula, in Mozambique.

Portuguese architect Maria João Zagallo has just seen her house in Chocas beach, in Nampula province northern, Mozambique, distinguished with the International Architecture Award 2022, Private Houses category, awarded by The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, ‘Expresso’ reports.

“To be the only Portuguese prize-winner, alongside international architecture studios such as Zaha Hadid Architects, Adjaye Associates and Shigeru Ban Architects, among others, is an honour,” Maria João Zagallo told Expresso.

Since last Friday, September 9th (until the 25th of this month), images of The Palm 313 in Mozambique and other awarded projects will be on display in an exhibition called ‘The City and The World’ at The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies in Athens, Greece.

Thirty-eight year old Maria João Zagallo, who has recently divided her activities between Portugal and Mozambique, told Expresso that she was surprised by the recognition, saying “I am still young, and still have a long way to go”. In fact, the architect started her career very early, with the signing of her first project – a hotel development, also in Mozambique – at the age of 25.

About the Praia das Chocas work now awarded, Maria João Zagallo notes that it is a large-scale project. “We are talking about a house next to the beach with an area of 2,000 square metres. And built more than 2000 kilometres from Maputo, in a remote place reachable only by dirt roads,” she says.

Access was so difficult, in fact, that practically all of the first order of large-scale glass panels – the house is made of transparencies – arrived at the construction site broken.

Despite the dimensions of the house, Maria João Zagallo says that she sees it as “something light, simple and minimalist”. “I actually think I’ve been able to keep all my projects simple,” she says. She mainly designs villas and hotels, “but always in this register of light and simplicity”.