Transistórias

Transistória was an experience-based learning activity that resulted from a collaboration between the Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon (FAUL), and the Aga Kahn Foundation (AKF). Promoting multi-level integration of people from different geographies in Greater Lisbon, through the K’CIDADE, Urban Community Development Programme, the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) developed a strategy called “Oficina do Artesanato” (‘The Craft Workshop’). This strategy aimed to encourage local entrepreneurship and rethink local development in Lisboa, Sintra and Oeiras through a network of local workshops to make ideas real and facilitate networking between communities, citizens, public and private institutions. In 2017, the invitation to FAULisboa, was to collaborate with the workshop located in Sintra that had been co-founded with the Association of the Islamic Community of Tapada das Mercês e Mem-Martins (ACITMMM). Building upon this ongoing initiative, the collaboration was set-up within the unit of “Sustainability of products and services” in the Master in Product Design course at FAULisboa. For a semester long, design students and migrant entrepreneurs came together to co-design sustainable products and services that valued the cultural traditions and daily practices of the entrepreneurs in Tapada das Mercês, Sintra, Greater Lisbon as well as explored alternative socio-economic futures. The process ended with an Exhibition at Casa do Elétrico, in Sintra, in April 2018, in which the work of each group was presented under the motto “How can a learning space and time between entrepreneurs and designers bring innovation through cultural valorisation? We’ve experimented.”