SPCC A Casa Amarela

Two years ago I started to think about having a place where I could have my photography studio and share my art, organize small events, performances, workshops, etc. The idea eventually evolved to some kind of a non-profit cultural center. I was living in Porto, and wanted to return to my hometown - Lisbon. I started to plan my return to Lisbon and at the same time planning the cultural center. The CC would feature a venue room for concerts, dj partys and maybe theatre performances, a room for a book and cd library, and also a space for lectures and workshops. All of this including having other persons working on it, sharing their own ideas and concepts, and if possible from many other countries. What I call a living-free-spirited-building.

I was working again, and the oportunity to be transfered to Lisbon came. By October my path crossed with J's and we realized that we had the same vision/idea to have a non profit cultural center. In December from the last year my company gave me the green light for the transfer and so I came to Lisbon and ended up living in J's house. There i met other's (A, L and S) since he hosts couchsurfers from all over the world, and who had similar plans or just wanted to make a squat. As time passed and we discussed the idea we went looking for a place to squat in one of our urban exploring sessions.

We found a perfect building for the concept: a massive yellow building with 4 floors, plus a roof. The building was perfect: simple, geometric and in great condition with just a few windows broken and a lot of dirt and garbage, and most important it had no neighboors!

Everyone agreed that that building was perfect, so we started to look up for information about it. I did some phreaking on the name of the company that was written on the building's front wall, and we ended up discovering that it had been sold to a huge multinational group 7 years ago. We searched for possible plans for that area and found nothing.

We decided that it was time to squat that building.

Things were doing great. We had one floor cleaned up, everybody was excited about the squatting and the project itself. We found that there was a guy living there, but once we met him and explained our idea he was cool with it and even started to help us out.

By this time G showed in J's house through couchsurfing and started to help us. The guys found out one day when they were cleaning that the building was now owned by Galp, and that area was going to be demolished in 2014, so we could stay there til then.

Now that we knew that we could stay there without the risk of being evicted the hard work started. I had a plan for the rooms. Since building fake walls was too expensive or recycling bricks would take us too long, i came up with the idea of making the walls with colorful fabrics instead. It was cheaper, easy to make and it would preserve the light on the floor, plus it would add a beautiful effect. I showed everyone the idea that I had and everyone liked it.

Since nobody proposed any other idea for the rooms, me and J went to buy stuff for the rooms and started to build the thing up. By this time some of the squatters started to feel excluded and not participant enough, and litle conflicts started to show up. Me and J kinda snapped out, but things got cleared with a nice talk in which I explained my opinions on how things should be done in such a big project, and for example if person has an idea, that idea should presented to others, and if nobody presents any other the first and only idea should be put in practice, which was what me and J did with the rooms project. I also made clear that despite the fact that I was working alone on that particular idea I was always open to opinions and tips, and this should be applied to any other similar event. Two heads are better than one.

This little conflict was solved, and then two other guys that we know got evicted from their squat and somebody suggested that they could stay in the yellow building. This situation turned out to be a bit complicated because the couple (P and M) have 4 dogs. Plus they wanted to build their own room with fake walls because of the dogs and because they wanted their privacy, wich i totally understand. But that ended up leading me to another problem: fabrics and dogs don't match. So i thought about putting their room in the further corner and use wood and then build up the rest of the rooms has it was planned. The dogs will still have access to the fabric rooms, but lets just see out it works.

Today, me, A, L and S went there. Me and L got a shovel and big metal plate to help with the floor-cleaning. The girls stayed there and I went sewing-machine hunting and wandered for hours until I found one. Now I can start to make the fabrics for the rooms, because i couldn't handle it if i was going to sew by hand around 60 meters of fabric. And the 4th floor is cleaned!

With P, M and O moving in we needed to put them up to what we were doing. I was afraid that they wouldn't agree or like our project, but J and I went there last night and they ended up digging the idea. Today we had our first meeting I guess. We reviewed the project and we decided that for now, till the hosting floor is ready we're not accepting anyone else. Now we're 8 people, ones with great ideas, others with experience on squatting and I guess everybody is excited about the project, and we're still getting to know each other.

This is my very own and personal opinion. We are moving in calmly and planning all things pretty well so that the building and the project works as good as possible. My experience in these kind of things (sometimes with larger groups) tells me that dealing with a large group of people (more than 3 for example) sometimes is hard and even frustrating in some situations. Not everybody communicates and express their ideas in the same way, and we sure don't have the same vision and opinions on different subjects and it's hard to get to a consensus about problems or situations. Right now I'm neither optimistic or pessimistic I guess. I'm just waiting to see how it's going to work.

Today I got a sewing machine, because I can't handle to work by hand on about 60 meters of fabric. Hopefully tomorrow the first room is ready.

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