The story is common: three partners buy a neglected property at auction with the intention of renovating and activating it, but in the process they lose the money to do so; the owners’ failure is compounded by a real estate crisis and the mansion — with no resale value, no possibility of investment — is abandoned in a kind of limbo. After ten years, the owners had already lost all hope for the property, which was gradually falling into disrepair. How can we create hope in the financially and subjectively bankrupt spaces that define old city centers in Brazil? An experiment that incorporates ‘everyday life’ as material: remains of the routine demolitions of Salvador, a city that does not recycle; but also people who know each other, exchange experiences and create space. In contrast to architecture as an object without context, our process is essentially specific: people have names, materials have a history. Executing a work like this, between chance and intimacy, is necessarily non-linear; the resulting architecture is not the faithful execution of a design but rather a palimpsest of materials, projects, conversations, mistakes and dreams.