02_ABOUT US
“REGENLAB” is a project related to urban issues of a city in all dimensions. The main question of this project refers to the potential of creative cities as an urban regeneration model as well as a vehicle to promote citizen participation in the construction of contemporary cities.
At the beginning of 2008, IMERGE (a non-profit cultural cooperative) invited a group of people to form a collective for reflection and analysis of the area nearby the location of IMERGE. The main aim was to work on the urban and culture regeneration of the city.
In the begining the main goal was to create a cultural cluster making the connection with the owners of the buildings and encouraging entrepreneurship. It was considered necessary to conduct a thorough research with the involvement of young people from different countries concerned by this issue. This group consists of architects Susana Milão and Laurent Scanga, Conceição Rios and Marta Castro – cultural animators who began the process in collaboration with Ahmet Kiziltas, the French student of architecture, who, during his 3 month practice in “Leonardo”, developed the urban research and data collection.
Since then several applications for national and European programs have been done, and following the original idea in July 2008 was created a working group with young people from different backgrounds and from different countries that developed proposals for work and research in the city area: Nadja Laine – a sociologist from Finland, Gaëlle Sandré – a French designer/illustrator, Ineta Želve – a Latvian journalist/specialist in the area of communication sciences, Grégoire Fabvre – a French video/documentary maker, Vaida Tamoševičiūtė – an artist from Lithuania, Alda Coelho – a Portuguese architect and Isa Egea – an artist/photographer from Spain, Barcelona.
In 2009 a new group of people has arrived: an architect Guoda Bardauskaitė from Lithuania, a graphic designer Kristīna Lukjanska from Latvia and journalist Annija Senakola from Latvia. Bruna Amaral, a Portuguese student from culture production area, has also joined the team, as well as João Catalão, who will cooperate with us, as art director, in one of the subprojects related to “vitrines” [Ressurgência] – a window project done in collaboration with the owners of the building in front of IMERGE. As consultants we also have invited Steven Gayme, an urban planner from France, and Margarida Oliveira, a Portuguese student of architecture.
So in 2009, we decided to enlarge the study area of the city center and to work on the idea of producing new cartographies of the city. The idea is to explore “cartographies” of the city as a method to built new mental maps of the urban territory.
REGENLAB is a long term project that shows the first steps of the fieldwork and research done over recent months. The work is in progress and will continue in 2010 with more participation of young people from Europe and wants to open the process and reflection about the city and involve other people interested in the issue of urban regeneration in art and culture.
