Verão na ULisboa is an initiative that aims to provide young people from the 3rd cycle of basic education and secondary education the opportunity to contact university students and professors through the development of various activities, such as experiments, games, visits to laboratories and workshops. This initiative took place during the first two weeks of July 2024.

In the case of Instituto Superior Técnico, the activities are carried out by the student associations of the various courses under the coordination of the Núcleo de Apoio ao Estudante (NAPE). The Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Environment participated in this initiative through NucleAR and the Fórum Civil.

In the case of NucleAR, the activity consisted of creating an architectural route (architectural promenade) through a small world imagined on the scale of a Lego man. To accomplish this task, the subgroups had a limited number of construction elements and had to use their creativity to connect different points and communities together, in a race against time. Participants were able to experience all phases of the architectural project, from context analysis, to design and execution. At the end of the activity, the subgroups presented their proposals, which were then evaluated and scored by NucleAR monitors. The students involved were the following: Tomás Ribeiro (responsible), Nuno Urbano, Eugénia Aparício, João Gomes, Lara Santos, Mara Pimenta, Francisco Bessa, João Pereira, Pedro Leal, Tomás Sancho, Sofia Junqueira and Rita Dias.

With the Fórum Civil students built bridge models made of wooden sticks connected using hot glue. The students were explained the basic concepts of equilibrium of truss structures and tensile and compression internal forces. The bridges to be built had a minimum span of 35 cm and were then tested until failure by applying a concentrated load at mid-span. This load was materialized by suspending a bucket to which sand was incrementally added. The activity ended with a visit to the Laboratory of Structures and Strength of Materials (LERM), where students were able to see reinforced concrete beams, profiles and connections between profiles of composite materials, a large steel beam, stone masonry walls with several reinforcement solutions, a three-dimensional frame made of fiberglass composite profiles and concrete slabs mounted on a seismic table and the wind test tunnel. The students involved were the following: Matilde Ganhão, João Nunca, Pedro Semião, Diana Varum, Carolina Silva, Inês Fonseca, Afonso Guedes, Matilde Furtado, Rodrigo Farinha, Ângelo Joaquim, João Damião, Francisco Germano, João Pegas and Teresa Neves.

The Executive Committee thanks everyone involved for their commitment and dedication to this initiative.

🔗 Biography: https://linktr.ee/decivil