A Casa Azul

Maria Saiz, Louane Papin e Rosanna Trocchia

The « Casa Azul », as we decided to call it, located in the center of Vizela, is abandoned for many years according to the different families that used to live there. The owner, that now lives in Lisbon, doesn’t have much interest in selling it except for a good price. So, despite the cultural values of the house, it remains abandoned.

Along the semester, we tried to understand the history of the house as well as Vizela’s population identity to propose the most efficient solution. What came up of those investigations, is that the center of Vizela is mostly frequented by retired people because the young generation seems to not find activities to do there. We decided that the main objective of our project will be to find a solution for these TWO GENERATIONS TO MEET EACH OTHER. As the house is supposed to be for the public, we though that it should be to the public to identify the kind of program may attract them here. That’s when we decided to organize a PUBLIC PICNIC in the terrain of the « Casa Azul », to invite them to participate to our initiative.

Then, 2 PHASES started: first, the preparation of an exercise to ask the people’s opinion; second, the preparation of the terrain for the picnic. As plans and sections are not the best way of communication for people that are not used to read this kind of documents, we decided to realize TWO MODELS IN A BIG SCALE so everyone can be able to understand the space.

Finally, we were very surprised of the quantity of people we succeed to touch. On the day of the picnic, much more people showed up as what we were expecting. Some of them agreed with pleasure to play the game of the model, even if the results were sometimes not as clear as we wanted. Just to say that things can get a little bit out of control even if we try to prepare and organize everything. By calling it « Casa Azul » and talk to the people on several times about it, using this name, they started to use it too. This house, that was for so long abandoned, and that nobody was paying attention to, became a current subject of discussion.

At the end, it didn’t take a lot of means to make the « Casa Azul » to LIVE AGAIN. The preparation of the terrains cost us almost nothing, it just needed a lot of motivation and strength of spirit. Because from small things can come up something bigger…