Rafael Vieira was born in Coimbra in 1979. A journalist and an architect, he has a master’s degree in Urban Rehabilitation and is a postgraduate student in Collaborative Investigative Journalism at the Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Coimbra. He manages the online archive CoimbraStreetArt and is an activist in the civic groups “Eu Também Coimbra” and “Coimbr’a Pedal”. He is one of the founders, gatherers and facilitator of the [TdC] project.
Liliana Marante was born in Águeda in 1985. A psychologist and massage therapist, she has a master’s degree in Systemic Psychology and is a postgraduate student in Dance and Movement in Psychotherapy at the FPCE, Universidade de Coimbra. She is an activist in the “Coimbr’a Pedal” collective. She is one of the founders of the [TdC] project.
Presentation of the project Tipos de Coimbra [TdC] [Types of Coimbra]
Tipos de Coimbra [TdC] is a non-profit museological-aspiring project that aims to rescue shop and advertising signs extant on Coimbra’s façades, which are at risk of loss or destruction, removing them from the streets and preserving them in a dynamic collection. It lives at the intersection of memory, history, art and technology as a temporal testimony of a genius loci and timelessness for the re-signification of a sense of belonging. As a project permanently under construction, which grows with each salvage, the aim is also to restore and exhibit the elements reclaimed from the streets. The collection now has twenty-nine pieces, featuring neon glass elements, acrylic light boxes, metal plates and other artefacts from different decades, which bear witness to different eras of the graphic image of the city of Coimbra, while aiming to restore these graphic, technological and topographical elements that once populated the urban landscape. The project’s final goal is to evolve into a museum structure to promote exhibitions and publications so that the technologies and topography of these signs can be made known to the public, while preserving the stories of the brands, companies and people contained in these elements. In addition to the current collection, negotiations are underway to salvage around a dozen signs in Coimbra and neighbouring towns.
