CAL VIVA – conference

Partipation on the conference “Conversas à volta da cal” in Aljezur, 11 de Março 2017 with a presentation entitled: “Cal – A banalidade do material que adquire novo significado”. The focus was on lime and it’s inseparability from the support, my experience with it and the presentation of bldgconcept related projects using lime, adobe bricks and rammed earth. Abstract: Lime is not indissociable from the support. If we use monolithic or masonry walls in adobe, and try to use natural materials, we may begin to add meaning. The architectural object acquires singularity through the use of materials such as lime. Drawing on examples of specific projects – not yet built – as well as direct references to the application of rammed earth/ taipa and earth bricks, I intend to demonstrate the virtues of working with natural materials in general and with lime in particular.

Project Synopsis by Tertulia:
“Cal Viva” is born of a vision that is imposed from the South. The geological constitution of the Algarve is crossed by a limestone, and lime kilns, in important times, delimiting an imaginary fortress, where the castles are the ovens in which the stone is transformed into lime, and the walls are that same limestone, the raw material of white. And white becomes weapon and language. The house retakes its color and its form to each marriage. The living but inorganic lime dies when it is mixed in the water, and it returns to life through a set of practices that constitute the process of the kernel. “Cal viva” wants to experience the encounter between the “new caiadores” – the artists, the inhabitants and users of the walls in which this material is still used and all those who are unaware of the tradition related to the “caiação”.

Lime is a material with diverse characteristics – it cleans, preserves, reinforces and beautifies the walls. For those who used or use it, it is also an important element of attachment to the home, family, memories – time to “caiar”, lime removed and carefully preserved to use throughout the year or the following year, lime layers superimposed , as a self-created archaeological substrate. Starting from the tradition of the “caiação”, a group of artists will produce a set of interventions that will materialize in different mediums – video, performance, sculpture, painting, drawing or installation.

The works will be produced based on the identification of the processes and the language of the kennel, in zones of the municipalities of Vila do Bispo and Aljezur and bordering. These artistic interventions that will be temporary – lasting for two days – will take place in the Castle of Aljezur and in the historical center of the village establishing a route that leaves the Castle and returns to it. Artists will be invited to bring a new look, a new element to the use of lime and the associated gestures, be it process, function, pigment, it’s use or other.