FOCUS: A place for Maputo's children.

Publication: Building Design

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COPYRIGHT 2006 CMP Information Ltd.

Architects for Aid has been dispatching architects to some of the world's most embattled places to assist with disaster relief and reconstruction. Zoae Blackler travelled to Mozambique to report on a project to build a brighter future for the city's street children

Thinking about it now, it was probably only a toy gun. But surrounded by 40 teenagers living a Lord of the Flies existence on the margins of society, most likely in an altered state through glue or alcohol, arguing with our minder in an African language I couldn't understand, I was ready to believe the worst.

We were in the rubble-strewn back yard of a derelict shell of a building in downtown Maputo. Home, if you can call it that, to a gang of street children aged between 15 and 21. We were here to try to talk to them for a short film on the work of Architects for Aid, to be shown next month at BD's Architect of the Year Awards. But as their hostility made clear, they weren't keen to talk to us. Another...

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