Ver(de) Terra is an urban regeneration project developed in collaboration with the community of the Tabaqueira neighborhood in Sintra.

In collaboration with visual artist Mariana Dias Coutinho and environmental engineer Andreia Rijo, Tanque invited the neighborhood’s residents to take a creative look at the public space, its function, and its use, with the aim of inhabiting it in a more sustainable and cooperative way. 

Through roundtable discussions and walks with residents, an emotional map was created that outlined the neighborhood’s places. A peripheral area of the territory was identified where residents felt disconnected from social and cultural dynamics. To bridge this gap, a proposal was designed to rehabilitate the Bairro Novo lake, so that the community could inhabit the space in a new way.

Drawing workshops were held to paint a collective mural on the lake’s structure, using natural pigments sourced from the neighborhood’s soil. In parallel, ceramics workshops were conducted to build an irrigation system for the flower beds surrounding the lake. 

At the end of the process, an exhibition-tour was inaugurated at Tab Lab, showcasing the results of the entire residency. A walk to the lake was organized, where the “Notebook of Identified Species” and the best practices manual were presented, empowering the community to take responsibility for maintaining the space