PORTUGAL

30. 5. - 3. 6. 2022

Due to the impact that COVID has had on the project, the partners have decided to put the meeting planned for Portugal as the penultimate, so that the house under construction at the Lycée de la Martinique can be inaugurated at the end of the project.

Thus, the activities programmed for Portugal have undergone slight modifications.

We considered it important for the inhabitants of the house of tomorrow to experience environmentally friendly spaces and sports. On the other hand, it was also important for us to know the way and the space of life of our ancestors, in this corner of Europe. we organized meetings with small business owners from Loulé and we also had a meeting with a representative of the town hall to talk about the subject and entrepreneurship. Finally, we tried to demonstrate the importance of a local and sustainable material, increasingly used in construction, and highly appreciated abroad.


In accordance with the project's theme, which aims to implement environmentally friendly attitudes, teachers and students practiced non-polluting water sports in Ria Formosa and visited the Ramalhete Center, an Algarve University facility, managed by the Algarve Sea Science Centre, which hosts research projects related to marine organisms in the surrounding geographical area.

As it is important to look to the past to understand how our ancestors lived, and to better design tomorrow's living space, the Erasmus group had the opportunity to visit the Silves Castle, whose internal structure was built with rammed earth, and the Islamic Baths, recently opened in Loulé.

Thinking about the physical living space, the partners visited “Corticeira Amorim”, an industrial unit in Silves, which produces agglomerates made solely from expanded cork, a sustainable material used in sustainable construction for thermal and acoustic insulation purposes. 

Amorim is one of Portugal's leading cork manufacturers, whose production process was thoroughly introduced to young people. The factory produces insulation material. A relative of oak - cork, grows a new thick bark in 9 years, is a raw material to produce bottle caps, insulation material and other products. The fruit matures in 45 years. What makes the cork material valuable is its special properties: it is light and strong, with very good temperature retention, noise attenuation and very poor fire control properties. For this purpose, 100% of the raw material is used and the surplus is returned to production. No toxic chemicals are used in the production, the plates are pressed from the crushed cork with hot steam, during which the pitch in the wood is released and the plates are allowed to cool in the air. The chocolate brown cork plate is cut into plates of different thicknesses, packaged and stored. Damaged plates return to the treatment cycle.

Cork board is an exclusive finishing material and is highly valued all over the world, it is bought by rich countries such as Japan, Saudi Arabia, China, and others. Portugal accounts for 49.6% of world annual cork production ahead of Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, Italy, France and Algeria.

The Tomorrow's Living Space intends to be a sustainable space, but also a space that values the creativity and traditional arts of each partner region, so the partners went to Palácio Gama Lobo to get to know the Loulé City Hall projects "Loulé Criativo" and Loulé Design Lab". They toured the city to meet and exchange views with artisans who work with palm, clay, and brass, and who make completely handmade stringed musical instruments. They were also able to visit beforehand the exhibition "#infinity", which resulted from a partnership between the designers and artisans of Loulé Design Lab and the municipal company Inframoura, responsible for the management, conservation and maintenance of public spaces in Vilamoura, in which some waste collected by Inframoura was given a new life, through its recovery and transformation into utilitarian objects that will be introduced in people's lives, in the economy, and mainly, at the service of social solidarity institutions.

In this meeting of partners, it was also decided that, based on the plans of the house that is being built in Martinique, within the scope of the project, we would oversee reproducing the model of the house in 3D, which we would take to the last meeting, to exhibit in the meeting with local entities. This work was assigned to two teachers to carry out this work with the students within the scope of the school's Robotics Club.


Corticeira Amorim: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yt6l4Ug2tmA 


Dissemination: https://erasmus-esl.pt/BussolaEstudantil/blog/2022/06/05/esl-recebe-os-parceiros-do-projeto-erasmus-cevd/