Arrebita!porto - José paixão interview [portuguese_english subtitles]

[JOSÉ] It started with a scholarship to attend high school in the United States, when I was 15. After the U.S., I went to do my degree in Architecture in the UK, and until last year I was doing a post-graduation in Vienna. I've been away for 12 years and each time I returned occasionally on vacation, I faced a reality that shocked me. [VOICE] And so he decided to act. Architect by training, he joined the two friends, and created a refurbishment project at zero cost to the dilapidated buildings in the city where he was born. [J] Our idea was to create a system, a model for rehabilitation, in which all won, all parties won with the re. [V.] He bet on a model of exchanging services. The refurbishment of the buildings is the responsibility of young students in architecture and engineering from abroad, which in return receive food and lodging from the landlords. The building materials are donated by partners from the industry, in return for tax benefits and the labor on site is in charge of those projecting the ideas. [J.] It will be the students to perform the refurbishment, the refurbishing work of course with training, and with the support of teachers and specialists. This is one of the major gains for the participation of students, practical training for work gained by participating in this program. [V.] This idea is already having the sympathy of Oporto city council, which has already relented this building for the starting of the project. Also the urban refurbishment society will help, with the permits and in the contact with the suppliers for the materials. [Rui M.S.] Oporto is becoming, in many ways, a low-cost city, and it lives also from the low costs. We also look very carefully to this phenomenon of students coming here, some that come back afterwards, who came to do an Erasmus and then come back here, and want to live here, and this is a huge market, it's a potential market for refurbished buildings, which makes sense. [V.] For the audacity and the potential, the Gulbenkian Foundation decided to award José Paixão idea, in the first FAZ contest. It is an encouragement for the project that already has ten ambassadors scattered around the world to find students, interested in living and learning in Oporto.