HISTORY OF THE WORST TOURS PROJECT
The Worst Tours started as an informal group of three architects, four years ago - the first tour happened on the 24th of December of 2012. By then, we were all working in lousy make-ends-meet-precarious-jobs, further and further from project or urban thinking, the construction business had stopped, architecture firms either turned to Angola, or closed... and we felt like putting our backgrounds to good use. We imagined walking debates borrowing the Corbusier's idea of a 'promenade architecturale' -where cinema met architecture and perspective started to matter- scaling it up, to a block- city scale: complexity and contradiction, center and periphery, market-rule and interventionism, abandonment and speculation, gentrification and museification, the similarities and differences with other cities and places in europe and beyond, and their solutions, good or bad, for them. Conversations over austerity and its implications, on living in the city, on the conditions for working here. Plus tea, and lots of walking.
Since then, we tried to organize in a way so that we would always have someone available to walk, if someone booked a tour, while we also worked in other things. We still do, and most days there is a tour. We never thought there would be so many people wanting to walk with us! From everywhere in the planet! This is an internationalist learning effort, of course. The ideas debated on the tours tend to influence zines, flyers and other types of poorly drawn materials (yes, we doodle) that are available in the most optimistic square meter in town, our sort of office, the kiosk.
As we kept on having tours, we organized an independent association to be able to have work contracts and (equal) wages (we currently hire two!!!) and pay the due taxes and social costs - any donations on this tour, that we thank for in advance but that are not charged, will be donations to said association (adequatly registered in legal and pretty receipts). Flawless.
Since then, we tried to organize in a way so that we would always have someone available to walk, if someone booked a tour, while we also worked in other things. We still do, and most days there is a tour. We never thought there would be so many people wanting to walk with us! From everywhere in the planet! This is an internationalist learning effort, of course. The ideas debated on the tours tend to influence zines, flyers and other types of poorly drawn materials (yes, we doodle) that are available in the most optimistic square meter in town, our sort of office, the kiosk.
As we kept on having tours, we organized an independent association to be able to have work contracts and (equal) wages (we currently hire two!!!) and pay the due taxes and social costs - any donations on this tour, that we thank for in advance but that are not charged, will be donations to said association (adequatly registered in legal and pretty receipts). Flawless.
