Spring has sprung here in Porto!

This week was a little less intense than previous.

Tuesday some of us went to a conference in which Jose was speaking at, about the social dimension of urban regeneration and Arrebita! at Santa Casa da Misericordia do Porto! Those of us who were not as confident with our Portuguese enjoyed the evening sun. We are continuing to work on the final new A!BOX designs and looking for the last few suppliers. Always getting closer to starting on site!

On Thursday Jose gave a presentation in French with the help of Madalena and Ruth from team 4 presenting Arrebita! to Centre Calouste Gulbenkian in Paris. Where we hope to show an image of Portugal that is positive and forward looking.

Ruth, Madalena and Jose at Centre Calouste Gulbenkian in Paris

While we in team 5 worked away in the studio finalising the material for the A!BOX.

The external finish of the A!Box lets you personalise as you want and the interior will be very shiny!  But we can’t reveal more information right now!

Monday we met with all the Arrebita! architects and showed them our input on the A!BOX and with their feedback we are getting ever closer to finishing the final design. Don’t worrying, we will show you as soon as we have it!

After some busy days trying to define the truly last version of the A!BOX (we hope you’ll love it) we had a cultural rest where we got the opportunity to listen to some local Fado singers.

Secret location !

Wednesday evening we joined a workshop about structural refurbishment by NCREP. For those who don’t speak Portuguese it was an opportunity to learn some Portuguese words and there were some nice pictures.

Ncrep conferences 

Team 5 are here to transform the previous team’s ideas to reality!

Making the most of the sun we made a tour of Porto and did a small photo shoot. 

We are Giulia Zanforlin (Italy), Catarina Gonçalves(Portugal), Deirbhile Doddy (Ireland), Alicia Gómez Quirantes (Spain),Jonas Roux-Briffaud (France). We are looking forward to getting our hands dirty and transforming the previous team’s work into reality!

On our first day we met with Madalena from Team 4 who showed us around the project and took us to the house we will be working on in Reboleira. On arrival we found a water fall down the upper levels of the stairs. We can´t wait to get started on the roof!

View down stairs of  Rua da Reboleria 42

Day 2 was spent with Ricardo at the “Infor” headquarters participating in an intense but informative ArchiCAD workshop. After a tiring day learning the program which is new for most of us we collected our bikes from “Banco das Bicicletas” which is a partner of Arrebita! supplying the international teams with transport. Cycling will be a challenge with the hills of Porto but we will be fit at the end of 3 months. However, for the first trip we took them on the metro J 

Team 5 and Ricardo Garim Dias, from Infor 

On Wednesday we presented some visiting students from France studying in Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Vol de Seine. They are doinga similar project to Arrebita! in an area of Paris as part of their studies and were interested in what we are doing here in Porto. 

We concluded the day with our first meeting with the engineers where we discussed the any outstanding issues left to us from Team 4 and the new A!Box structure.

To conclude our first week we made our first factory visit to CINCA , where we were given a tour around the showrooms. We saw many types of tiles from typical Azulejo designs to modern bright coloured tiles and everything in between. CINCA gave us a few parting gifts (sample tiles) to play with and to help us in our choice of tiles for the A!Box . We look forward to adding them to the design. 

Jose studying some typical tiles

Discussing the tiles

Team 5 with our tile samples

Today we had a presentation from Porto Vivo, they told us a bit about the history of Porto and the work they are doing in the city. We had a tour of two buildings in Morro da Sé which gave us faith that these works can restore the city. We also received some informative publications about the centre of Porto and the work of Porto Vivo.

Finally we’re looking forward to getting messy in the building, we’ll keep you updated on the progress we’re making with the building. Previous teams and all followers we hope you like the new name A!Box J 

 

Até logo!

Every good experience comes to an end, and ARREBITA is no exception to this rule … But no sad faces here because we know that a new team will come and keep up the good work!

We hope they will have the same great and interesting time we had, discovering Porto, exploring the building practice and getting to know a lot of wonderfull people. We learned so many things, not only as professionals but also as human beings, that will  help us in our-  no guess - bright future.

We want to thank José and the Arrebita team for their endless efforts, their catching enthousiasm and for helping us feel at home in Porto.

To finalize, a little tip for team 5: " Don't forget to push the envelope! ;-)"

Cheers from Team 4

Balance of the week

Holes in Madelena's head: 1

Sunshine: 4 days and 1 morning

Fotoshoots in the alleys of Morro da Sé: 1

Delivered projects at Porto Vivo: 1!!!!!

Yoga class on the impossible moment of monday morning: 1

Sore muscles: 469

New CABA: 1

Images showing new CABA: 2

closed

open

Visits by a fireman: 1

Visits to the building to analyze the facade: 1

Heaters still working: 1

Cups of tea:526

Cups of coffee: 12.686 (cappucino not included)

José's charger breaking down:everyday

Days still to go: 7...

In the box

Hello dear followers !

This week-end has been great : after some intense days of work and reviews we finished the drawings package ! It's finished, it's printed, it's folded, it's organized, it's even in folders, it's in the box ! It's in the bag ! Now we just have to wait and hope everything will be ok and that the work on site will start soon !

Saturday afternoon thanks to Victor we had the chance to visit the Palacio do Bolhão which is being refurbished to become a theater. It's been eight years now that they've been working on it. Eight years ! If we thought that the process in Arrebita might be slow somesometimes (waiting for approval, waiting for this and that) this case showes us that changing things just takes time and a lot of effort and perseverance, but if it's done right, it's worth it. So here we are, in this beautiful palace wondering around the richly decorated rooms with molds and paintings bringing us back in time.