as we continue

Great apologies to all of you for being late with this post, but we wanted to do some work so that we can show to all of you. And this will be one very loooong post :)

 After few weeks in Porto area, we are officially not considered as tourists. And by being privileged with this –no tourist- title we receive more responsibility, gratis!

Starting with the meeting on Tuesday 26^th June with the acknowledged professor Teresa Fonseca, few subjects were discussed, including the space organization in service area and positioning the stairs in order to provide spaces with greater value. 

Since in this stage we are focusing on details, we made a survey of all the woodwork that is in our possession. This type of catalog will help us to get to know the amount of wood that is possible to re/use. For now the entrance facade doors are the only one s to be saved as they are, with small refurbishment actions. But this doesn’t mean that if the wood cannot maintain its primary function that will be just thrown away. The idea is to reuse as much as possible in any possible function. For now there are some ideas floating around, but we would love to hear yours. Please fill up the comment box with any idea, link, critique or anything related to the project. It will be great to start discussing these things with you.

Here is the survey:

After the meeting with the interior designer Caroline Cuvilier on 28^th of June, we decided that few changes according to CABA should be made. First the positioning. Since the entrances to the 1^st and 2^nd apartment are positioned on different side, the space that is provided has different qualities. So the change is reflecting only to the 2^nd floor, where the CABA is flipped on north-south axe, so that the position of the pipes is not changed, and the space in front of the kitchen is bigger. 

Another important task we had was to actually materialize/specify the drawings /plans/sections/details. All of this work was the preparation for Skype conference with Dimscale, which we had in the following (our third) week. In the meantime, we had our regular 

Tuesday night meeting with Arrebita architects + engineers that were helping us to solve some issues (roof, ventilation, sewage pipes, communications..).

On Wednesday we met LogAcustica, the company that was helping us to solve the issues regarding the acoustic insulation. Some of the things we learned was that main insulation layer should be placed between different functions, in our case that would be between apartments and commercial zone. We talked about different needs, and thus kinds of insulation we could use, some specific solutions for the CABA, and they recommended some providers… Altogether, some very useful info!

Finally on Thursday the 5^th we had online meeting with Dimscale, and we discussed our needs for materials, possible prices and so on. However, we sent them a list with all possible materials we could think of for our building (from nail to concrete) so they could help us in the search for suppliers.

And then came the weekend! It was the time for Arrebita! trip! Ze took some of us (that deserved it J) to his grandparents village near Tua, where all magic about Porto vine happens! It was perfect timing to wonder around, visit farm-in-cave, pick some tasty oranges and cherries, drink Porto vine and climb very dangerous hill in order to see some prehistoric paintings! But that’s the spirit of Arrebitas! Overall, it was a very nice weekend, and special thanks goes to Ze, his mom and grandparents for being the perfect hosts

happy familly

Monday again, back on track, we had a workshop with Porto Vivo, and learned about rehabilitation strategies and projects around Porto. They gave us a tour around our neighborhood to show us on site what was and is to be done. Amazing walk and amazing projects!

Porto Vivo presentation

visiting the ongoing projects of Porto Vivo

The rest of the time we mostly dedicated to the 4^th Open Working Day. On Tuesday we had a meeting with professora Teresa and in the evening we met some Arrebita! architects. Altogether, a few sleepless nights, and the presentation was finally made! The Open Working Day was a new experience for most of us, and we were quite satisfied how it went. We presented our work to our partners and the people we’re working with, and got some useful feedback on how to continue.

discussion after presentation

  Here is our presentation, please feel free to comment and add suggestions (positive and negative are all welcome!

 

 

 

 

  
However, that Wednesday was a full-schedule day, since later in the afternoon we had a workshop with IQ Energy. Nuno Rolo gave us some good ideas on how to maintain the energy within the building as much as we can. In the early evening we were preparing some delicious tiramisu for the dinner with our dear professora Teresa. We made a short trip to her lovely home in Matosinhos. It was a perfect ending to a busy day, thank you professora! 

pleasure is all ours

The end of the week was dedicated to sorting out all of the information we got so far. We met magna-natura, cork company that would provide this material for us. We learned about new interesting ways to implement cork in interior design, and we’ll try to find its place in our project. On Friday we had a short trip to Cobert factory in Torres Vedras, and we learned about the production of tiles, and were quite amazed with it! In the end it was a very successful visit, since we established the partnership with the company, as they would provide us the finest quality tiles for our roof! 

detailed tour of the factory

And this is just the beginning!

Jornal Público is following our work and here is the report that we were impatient to see :)

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! :)