Arrebita Team 2 is in da house!

So, we arrived! Piece by piece, the puzzle called TEAM 2 is complete!

Arriving in different time, the first were Pedro from Portugal and Ana from Macedonia, than Marta from Portugal, Ljiljana (a.k.a. Lili) from Serbia and just landed from Italy – Ilaria.

Lili, Ilaria, Marta, Ana & Pedro

Starting from Monday we had our hands full of work, thanks to the great job that the first team had done. Ingrid and Eva, the members of the Team 1, with a great help from Pedro and Marta, who were already well informed about the project, introduced Ana with the project and the building on the famous Reboleira 42. They were being present for the Open working days and in constant communication with the boss a.k.a. Josė.

The working plan for the following week, made by Josė, was settled.

Tuesday was fulfilled with question marks towards Ingrid and Eva, about anything that we could think of. Since they were available only this week, we had to squeeze all the information out of them, and then let them freely leave their “baby” behind, in good hands of course.

Going through the drawings and files, the evening was set for meeting and introduction to the wider circle of the Arrebita team – architects and engineers: Daniel Barbosa, Bernardino Lima, Ricardo Pinto, Pilar Abreu e Lima, Teresa Estrela, Rita Saturnino, Joana Morais Silva, Joana Miguel and Pedro Costa. Proposing some new ideas, new questions were raised and in the end the tasks for the next week were added.

After all day work went to have the deserved glass (read glasses) of beer in one of the uniquely decorated local bars.

Ana & the huge garlic

On Wednesday we have already had the updated measurements of the building, so there were some tiny changes to be made. What else was there to do, other than taking our laptops and getting the job done? We divided the responsibilities, in order for everyone to be useful in exact measure. Although without finishing, we very seriously started to go towards that goal.

While still waiting for Lili and Ilaria to come, the formal introduction of the city of Porto had to wait, but there was still the informal one. So take your Portuguese or even Norwegian friend by the hand and walk with eyes and ears open!

On Thursday we spent more time than usual to prepare for the work, because the reporter from the newspaper Público was coming to the office to make an interview about the Arrebita project, which is HUGE, and it’s not that we wanted to look good in the newspaper, but to be more self-confident in giving the better interview.

However the interviews went great, we talked a little bit about ourselves and our interests in Arrebita project.

Pedro - giving classes how to become famous

Meanwhile a meeting with Nuno Rolo Creado from RC Energy Solutions was going on, considering the possibilities of the building. We talk about questions related with thermic solutions and the energetic behavior of the building. It will be important to test our solutions in a model, to understand what could be the most efficient decisions and optimize the light and ventilation system.

And in the afternoon, after several cancelled flights, Lili arrived! She was introduced to the project quickly, but this time we were in the role of “tour guides”.

After this, with the sunset and European football championship continuing, it was the obligation to watch how Portugal team makes its way to the semifinals. Vamos Portugal!

All day Friday was reserved for our Archicad workshop in INFOR headquarters placed in Matosinhos. On this quick modeling course we were accompanied by Pedro Costa and Pilar Abreu e Lima. Special thanks to the master of Archicad – Ricardo and we’re looking forward to Artlantis workshop that will happen in the near future.

Archicad workshop's terrace with the Master-Ricardo, Pilar and Pedro

After slowly but successfully becoming Archicad geeks, we had our first touch with the ocean! Although we had a lot of enthusiasm for swimming, our swimming suits and towels stayed in the bag. But the weather forecast predicts brighter, warmer future!

 In order to summarize the completed working week, we and Josė – a special guest a.k.a. helper, prepared a dinner which was a good mixture of every country’s taste, with addition of Porto wine, of course!

As we arrived (at least most of us) in perfect timing for the party and celebration, we had a great privilege to feel the festive energy for São João!

4.20 once, 4.20 twice, sold to Arrebita! for 4.20!

After a great amount of positive people, hammer kicks, music and fireworks, Sunday was a day for horizontal positioned body and for collecting energy for the upcoming fulfilled week.

Josė with TEAM #2

working very hard-already

Now when the whole team is completed can’t wait to get busy!

The first team saying their goodbyes

It is now two and a half months since we arrived in Porto. Five new people, three not knowing Porto, two not knowing Portuguese, not knowing one another, and none of us, we suspect not even Paixão, really knowing what we were going to do.

And now we are here, almost three months later. We have learned a bunch of stuff, met fantastic people, made new friends, learned some Portuguese, gotten more tanned, and we actually have a project ready for submission! With the help of skilled people, great ambitions and a lot of working hours, we reached this point. We hope and think it is a good base for the next teams to work on with, and look forward to follow the process and see how the project evolves.
  

2nd floor apartment

Workshop in the basement

Seminars in the basement

Ground floor

Finally, there are a lot of people we would like to thank:
Sidewalk with Pilar and Diana, for giving us a warm welcome
Swark, for inspiring us to look for treasures
Celin, for her fresh perspective and exemplary work
Ricardo and Araujo at INFOR, for patient tutoring and support
Tiago, Valter and João Paulo at NCREP, for great cooperation and letting us use cool machines
Artur and David from Dimscale, for their inspiring enthusiasm and constant availability, and for even having a blog about the project!
Professor Jorge Vaz and Pedro Faria, for their knowledge and eagerness
Professora Teresa Fonseca, for reminding us of what is important
Susana Pacheco Barros, for a magical insight in the historical Porto
José Sequeira and Ana Leite Pereira at Porto Vivo, for sharing their work and points of view
Paulo Sousa, for a level of precision we could not reach ourselves
Ren Ito, for inspiration and knowledge
João Morgado, for fantastic photos
Ricardo Lemos from Fundacão talento, for inspiration
Mimi, for looking out for us
Vitor Sousa, for all his time, energy and patience
Catarina and Joana, for crucial insight to what we are working with (and to the unforgettable night life of Porto)
The Arrebita engineers; Rita, Daniel, Diogo, João and Bernardino, for knowledge, patience and magical pipework
The Arrebita architects; Pilar, Magía, Rita, Mary Ann, Joana, Teresa, Joana Vasconcelos and Pedro, for discussions and enthusiasm. An extra thanks to Pilar, who did fantastic works on the submission drawings and documents.
And last but not least, José Paixão, our boss and team mate, for giving us the opportunity, for his enthusiasm and ambitions. You're amazing, man!

We would also like to give a big thank to the families of José, Eva and Cristina, and everyone who has welcomed us to this beautiful country, city and project. Especially for the foreigners amongst us, meeting all these fantastic people has really made our stay!

Some impressions from our Porto experience you can see here.

Good luck to Ana, Pedro, Liljana, Marta and Ilaria with the next stage!

Até logo, Porto!
See you in February 2014!

We'll miss you - and we know you'll miss us too...

Making final decisions

We feel like these two months that passed have filled into one week…intense, important, exhausting, but without luxury of making a mistake! This was our last sprint before we hand over the baton to the next Arrebita team.

We had to make some final moves, based on all the things that we have passed through during all our brainstorming and discussions with consultants and between ourselves. All the things that we planned to present on Wednesday had to be more accurate and proven with good arguments. In terms of that, we had a help of the Arrebita architects that we met on Monday. We were out of time so we had a concrete and pragmatic discussion with them, that helped us to solve a few doubts that we still had. After that meeting, we had our project done, the only thing that we missed were the drawings! :)

So, we continued, with the pure physical work of finishing the plans, sections, elevations, and all the other drawings that we planned to present on Wednesday, and of course, that we need for delivery to the City hall.

On Tuesday, we had an opportunity to meet our partner João Morgado, a fantastic photographer whose work you can see on his website http://www.photo.joaomorgado.com/. We are pleased to have him on board! :)

The happy family, captured by João Morgado

Wednesday and Open Working day! We presented our ”final” project and afterwards, had a fantastic discussion with some of our consultants, partners and people who follow our work since the beginning. Luckily for us, basically there were not so much criticisms that would make us change much in our project. It was more theoretical, but also very healthy conversation and extremely inspiring! In these situations, where a lot of questions are raised, you can also think of your project from completely different perspectives, so once again it helped us to be more realistic with all the decisions that we made!

Here we give you the new parts of the presentation from the Open Working day:

The box placed in the apartment on the 1st floor

View from the appartment on 2nd floor

After the presentation, we had a workshop with Dimscale. Since now we know more precisely some materials that we were planning to use in our project, we can assume some prices. So, the thing that we were very interested in is the price of our box! One of our tasks now is to try to adapt design of ”Caba” to some cheaper materials so it wouldn’t be too expensive. As always, our reliable Dimscale is working on it!

The end of the week we spent on finishing our final drawings that we are going to submit in City Hall and finally start with a licensing process! :) Next week we will show you our final drawings we submit for the approval. Stay tuned, it will be amazing!

We also have the great news of knowing now who are the members of next Arrebita team! The new “magic five” are: Ana Momirovska (Macedonia), Ilaria La Corte (Italy), Ljiljana Vidovic (Serbia), Marta Nunes (Portugal) and Pedro Santos (Portugal). We hope that we will have opportunity to meet them before we leave, but in any case, we are sure that we are leaving the project in the right hands! :)

Our last open working day coming up...

As our last Saturday was changed for Monday, this working week started on Tuesday in the building with NCREP. Now the structure is finally secured for us to enter, and at last we were able to see the roof construction and visit the basement. The roof was more or less like we expected, but unfortunately in a quite poor state. NCREP will do some calculations to we whether we are able to keep in or if we have to replace it. Some parts will have to be replaced anyway, as there are some heavy damages caused by moist in some of the supports. The basement was a dark and smelly place, and hopefully we manage to get in some new fresh air and life...

Finally the mysterious roof structure is revealed...

Discovering the roof and the basement with NCREP

Later on Tuesday we got a visit from professor Jorge Vaz from ESAP, with whom we discussed details and technical solutions. This was of great help, a very efficient and valuable session. We are looking forward to the next one, saving up questions!

Details are discussed with professor Vaz

Finally, Tuesday was rounded off with the architects of the Arrebita team. Helping us with solutions here and there, and discussing our submission papers. Accompanied with pizza and chit-chat, this was a nice informal working discussion. It is great to be a part of the Arrebita family!

On Wednesday we had a tutoring with professora Teresa Fonseca. It has been a while since the last one, but it is always good to know that we are heading in the right direction. Adjustments were made and problems solved. Some new problems also tend to be revealed, but they will probably be solved during the next days. Hopefully...

The same day we also had a workshop with Joana Leandro Vasconcelos from in.vitro atelier de arquitectura. She walked us through the entire process of a project in Portugal, describing all the fases, submissions that have to be done, and what we are handing in next week. A helpful insight to the process!

Rest of the week was spent just working on. A lot of aspects have been well discussed, but we are now really looking forward to the meeting with Magnetic fields on Monday. Discussing the energy solutions of the building is now getting crucial.

Exploring details

As the building was secured, we could also get a professional geometrical survey. We were lucky to have Paulo Sousa helping us with this, and now we finally have accurate drawings. We might not have time to adjust the drawing work we've done so far before the next open working day, but it will be done eventually. Luckily the differences were not too severe!

And now we have only few days left for our next open working day. We are looking forward to this last presentation and discussion. We are finishing drawings for this, and at the same time for submitting the project at the municipality. Lists of drawings are made, and remade. 

One of many lists...

We would like to post here some of our recent drawings for you to see before the last round of discussions, but right now they are all more or less work in progress, so we will post after Wednesday instead. Nevertheless, we would like to see as many as possible this last Open Working day! Come and help us finalize this project!

Work, work and an important visitor

The days are going by so quickly, and in all the intense working the blog ends up somehow neglected. To sum up last week, we were working on with ideas and discussions from the last open working day. We got a lot of good input, and details are changed, changed back and discussed again. Sometimes it feels like we are going backwards, but finally the project keeps on improving.

We promised you last week to show pictures of our models. Here are both pictures of working models, and the models made for the last open working day. 

Working models

The entire building

1:50 of the house

Model of the box

Most of the time this week, we worked on our own, without workshops or meetings. Still the week passed quickly. We had an afternoon meeting with the Arrebita engineers, and this was a great help to reach some conclusions about technical aspects. But there is still a lot left, and the days till next open working day will be busy!

Engineer

On the Friday we had a nice break from the work and Ricardo Lemos from Fundacão Talento showed us around at the Palacio das Artes. Thank you for that!  

With Ricardo at Palacio das Artes

On Saturday our little studio was filled with people; Arrebitas, partners, journalists, and last but not least; the secretary of state of youth Alexandre Mestre. We were honoured that he wanted to visit us and here what we are working with. The secretary of state is invited back in august to see the final presentation before the working starts on site.

Visit from the secretary of state

Eva's drawing for our guest

And finally we had some weekend time. We had a great trip visiting the Lands of Eva, Viana do Castelo, Ponte do Lima, Caminha, markets, climbing a mountain(by car), having a fantastic Sunday lunch, seeing Spain, the ocean and a beautiful scenery, inspecting a home made hydro power plant and the future generation of Portuguese movie makers. Great weekend, great hosts! Thank you!

In Viana do Castelo