Community kitchen | Honourable Mention at Crisis Buster Grants - Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa 2013*
[ENG]
Populated since the 18th Century, Costa de Caparica, a village located in the south margin of the Tejo river presently constitutes one of the largest multicultural centres of Portugal, and it has been evolving around two major base-communities: fishing and agricultural. The coastal area of the Costa da Caparica district, known as Costa, was developed by two distinct fishermen crews from Ílhavo and Olhão – located in the north and south of Portugal, respectively.
Contrastingly, the land zone located at the base of the Fossil Cliffs, known as Terras da Costa, was developed by the agricultural community, being presently occupied by immigrant populations from other Portuguese-speaking countries (mainly Cape Verdeans), gipsy community, Brazilians, and Portuguese migrants. Living in a slum located in a restricted agricultural and environmentally protected area, this community of Terras do Lelo Martins has been struggling for better conditions for the past 30 years.
There is no legal electricity network, water supply or sewage system, and the nearest public water supply point is 400 m away from the neighbourhood. Thus, many families end up cooking on campfires inside their houses, endangering a whole waterless neighbourhood. Additionally, there are no proper public spaces for people to gather, in a community with about 500 people of which one fifth are children.
* Despite being recognized with an honourable mention at Crisis Buster Grants it does not allow us to start the project. We are still looking for one partner/sponsor/funding, so that we may start all the procedures.