With art deco theaters, mid-century modern hotels, climate-sensitive schools, modernist housing blocks, and rationalist civic buildings, Maputo, Mozambique holds one of the most important collections of African modern architecture while it remains almost completely unknown outside the Portuguese-speaking world. Maputo Modern produces the most comprehensive field survey of this previously unstudied repository of modern architecture. The field survey and archival materials uncovered form the basis of an interpretive project on the forty-year evolution of Portuguese colonial architecture. While other studies have looked at specific aspects of the city, Maputo Modern is the first to examine the development of the city as a whole prior to its independence. This research is the foundation for a forthcoming book and exhibition.

Alan G. Brake is a writer, critic, and researcher on architecture, planning, and design. Currently the editor of the Midwest edition of the Architect's Newspaper, his writing has appeared in publications including Architectural Record, Metropolis, the New York Times, and the Believer.  He earned a master's in environmental design from Yale University and graduated cum laude from Vassar College with a degree in urban studies and English. He has served on design juries at Columbia, Parsons, Rutgers, and the University of Kentucky; was a panelist for a symposium at the Museum of the City of New York; and was a moderator at the Mobile Anxieties Symposium at the Yale School of Architecture.

Liz McEnaney is the executive director of the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation and adjunct professor in the Historic Preservation Program at Columbia University. Prior to this, she collaborated with institutions and clients including the Kress Foundation, the World Monuments Fund, the Leon Levy Foundation, and Pentagram Design. She provided exhibition research for James Sanders on the exhibition Seaport Then and Now, on view in New York, and has produced a documentary that examines development and planning issues in New York's Hudson Valley. She earned a master's degree in historic preservation from Columbia University, where she was awarded a prize for her graduate thesis, and graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a degree in art history.