Project development: United Kingdom

The Climate Forum is a research, curriculum, and exchange platform that brings the urgent focus of the climate and ecological emergency to the center of the Spatial Practices program at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. Led by Catalina Mejía Moreno, Senior Lecturer in Climate Studies, in collaboration with students and faculty from the Spatial Practices courses, the Climate Forum has been building a collaborative platform where pedagogical initiatives, spatial practices, and projects involving socio-ecological, racial, and environmental justice are highlighted and shared among students and faculty. At the same time, the Climate Forum has worked to consolidate modes of critical thinking that focus on practices of reparation, reciprocity, kinship, and non-extractive practices, whether material, spatial, or otherwise, while articulating methods to better understand the social structures in which we all operate and the spaces of action in which equitable and solidarity-based practices can emerge.

CLIMATE WHEEL: CLIMATE WHEEL: As spatial professionals, we have a duty to move away from practices that degrade the Earth and society. By recognizing climate change as a symptom of a broader problem, we understand that addressing the climate crisis holistically means moving beyond logistical and technocratic "solutions" as mere tools for sustainable construction. This "climate wheel" stems from the project "What is and what can be"—a project that seeks to understand the myriad ways in which architectural and spatial professionals can instead choose life-affirming practices. "What is and what can be" is an ongoing project in the Spatial Practices program (Central Saint Martins, UAL) that seeks to understand how "climate" or "climate issues" are being addressed in classrooms: through the content taught, the work of students, and the teaching practices of professors. The 'climate wheel' builds on a foundation of existing climate action frameworks that shape courses, the profession, and broader discourse. We analyzed 11 frameworks spanning institutional principles, Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) guidance, industry action groups, business certification, and climate justice movements. The words used in the wheel emerge from their terminologies.

This project was conceived and produced in collaboration between the Spatial Practices Climate Forum and MA Architecture (CSM), and supported by UAL's Climate Action Manager, and the CSM's BA Architecture and MA Cities courses.
'What is and what might be' – visit here: https://climate-forum.com/climate-audit-from-what-is-to-what-might-be

Project implementation: Ghana
Project development: Austria, Ghana

“Rehearsal of Green Returns” is a two-channel video installation that reflects on the transformation of the Old Tamale Airport in northern Ghana—a disused runway built in the 1920s—into a living landscape and shared urban terrain. Once a sealed-off strip of colonial infrastructure, the 1.4-kilometer-long, 40-meter-wide runway now lies within Tamale’s rapidly expanding urban fabric. Its unusual scale and rigid asphalt surface mark it as a site of latent potential: a “different” open space, suspended between memory, infrastructure, and the imagination of the future.

Green Returns Essay captures the open and processual nature of the project, working with uncertainty and fragility rather than offering fixed solutions. The act of gently "unsealing" seeks to reverse the patterns of extraction, enclosure, and overheating that define so many modern urban environments.

The installation unfolds through two perspectives. The first video presents [A]FA's speculative design proposal, which envisions the gradual activation of the runway and its transformation into living terrain. This imagined change transforms the inert asphalt into a dynamic landscape for multispecies gathering and cohabitation. The second documents a direct intervention carried out in May 2025: the transplantation of mature savanna trees from a nearby forest onto the airfield surface. This fragile yet radical gesture—moving life from one soil to another—transforms the sealed infrastructure into living space, blurring the boundaries between architecture, landscape, and ecology.

The transplant was carried out with local and international expertise in collaboration with the Ghana Forestry Commission. The trees were prepared during the rainy season, dug at the end of the dry season, and transported across the city despite logistical obstacles. Once replanted, they required irrigation, care, and storm protection. Their survival—standing, living, and adapting trees—now forms the ecological backbone for the site's future transformation.

By combining vision and implementation, speculation and labor, Green Returns Rehearsal unfolds as an essay, not a final statement. It enacts a radical act of grounding and greening, pointing to a resilience rooted not in control but in care, imagination, and collective practice. Situated within the urgency of rethinking the sealed, overheated surfaces that dominate cities worldwide, the installation is simultaneously a document and a proposition: an invitation to consider how architecture can serve as an ecological essay, returning life to urban soil and reimagining shared futures.

Project implementation: Mexico
Project development: Mexico

This project is a public washhouse designed to address the water crisis that the community of La Huerta de San Agustín has suffered in recent years. The aim was to design a dignified space, expanding the current work area and respecting the water source from a nearby natural spring.

The students were tasked with developing a collaborative assessment to understand the community's needs and demands through a series of interactive activities, which led to an architectural program. This program includes the laundry room itself with an attached playground, where children can spend time under the watchful eye of their mothers; along with this, there is an area for hanging clothes and a multipurpose rest area that offers views of the nearby rainwater harvesting area.

After several months of work, the students presented their projects to the community, who voted on their favorite design. The winning project was inspired by water lilies, natural biofilters, for the structure, given the project's connection to water and the surrounding natural environment. Each space is built on its own individual wooden structure, supported by a central column where the roof acts as a funnel that collects water and carries it to a cistern. This water is then used by people to wash their clothes and is then directed to a biofilter that cleans it, allowing it to be reused. Each material was chosen taking into account availability, ease of construction, environmental impact, and budget, which depends on donations from those willing to support the cause. This ongoing project represents the efforts of countless people, from teachers to students to the community itself, showing how their combined efforts can lead to something that goes even further than just themselves.

Project implementation: Germany
Project development: United Kingdom

Against a backdrop of growing climate challenges and urban inequalities, TreesAI emerges as an innovative response, aiming to revalue urban nature not just as an aesthetic component, but as critical, investable infrastructure for more resilient and just cities. Our tool, Location-Based Scoring (LBS), offers a practical, data-driven approach to addressing the complexities of the built environment and the environmental issues that impact cities.

TreesAI, born from the innovative context of Dark Matter Labs, is not traditional software. It is a dynamic system of quantitative and qualitative tools and methods, developed to meet the specific needs of partners involved in building more sustainable cities. The system's core essence is its ability to integrate innovative technologies with relevant data, positioning trees and urban ecosystems as investable infrastructure assets.

TreesAI's proposal goes beyond the traditional view of investing in nature. Rather than limiting itself to carbon offsetting, TreesAI focuses on the numerous co-benefits that nature offers cities. These benefits include thermal regulation, stormwater management, improved air quality, and contributions to public health and social well-being. By focusing on these multiple values, TreesAI proposes rethinking the value of nature in urban planning, creating financing models that recognize the long-term impact of nature-based solutions.

This approach transforms natural assets into tangible investments, generating a new civic economy that prioritizes the health of the planet and its inhabitants. A practical example of this innovative approach was the Location-Based Scoring (LBS) pilot project, conducted in Stuttgart, Germany, in 2023. In this project, we developed a tool to provide a deep, high-resolution understanding of georeferenced climate risk areas.

LBS allows users, from urban planners to community members, to explore the location profile of their cities, accurately identifying climate risks and vulnerabilities. The tool adapts to the specificities of each territory, offering granular and actionable insights to city managers and policymakers. With contextual adjustment capabilities, LBS transforms complex data into intuitive maps and scores, facilitating informed decisions about where and how to implement nature-based solutions, such as tree planting and urban flood management.

Visualizing LBS data helps simplify the analysis of critical information. This visualization allows urban planners to clearly see where climate risks are highest and where nature-based solutions, such as tree planting, can have the greatest impact. By utilizing real-time data and enabling contextual analysis, LBS offers a practical approach to mitigating climate risks, creating more efficient and adaptable green infrastructure.

The integration of LBS with other systems and methods developed by Dark Matter Labs creates a robust platform for TreesAI partners, enabling them to monitor, plan, and invest in green infrastructure more effectively. TreesAI's vision goes beyond simply using data—it proposes a revolution in the way cities approach the use of natural resources, recognizing them as assets that can generate long-term benefits for both society and the environment.

This is an invitation to rethink the value of nature in urban planning, especially for cities like São Paulo, where climate challenges and urban inequalities are widely felt. Through tools like LBS and Resilience Compass, TreesAI aims to transform the way urban managers think about green infrastructure, offering a fairer and more efficient financing model for the sustainable future of cities.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The creation of the new campus of the Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA) in Ceará represents a milestone in the expansion of excellent military academic training in Brazil. This is a strategic project of the Brazilian Air Force, made possible by the Cooperation Agreement between the Ministries of Defense and Education. The campus will be located at the former Fortaleza Air Base, a site of significant historical value, whose origins date back to the 6th Aviation Regiment of 1933 and the architectural design by Emilio Hinko of 1941.

The architectural proposal seeks to reconcile the preservation of history with contemporary solutions. The master plan, developed by CEPE (Center for Aeronautical Engineering Studies and Projects), envisages the redevelopment of the historic site, combining heritage conservation with the inclusion of new programmatic spaces dedicated to teaching, research, and academic life. The project promotes a harmonious relationship between the old and the new, with functional sectorization designed for efficiency, urban integration, and sustainability.

The campus infrastructure will include three buildings for engineering programs, a library, an auditorium, administrative headquarters, five student residences, sports and leisure areas, parking, bike paths, a technology park, and a photovoltaic plant, highlighting the university's commitment to clean energy. The road system will be restructured, with the widening of roads and the creation of new internal streets, promoting fluidity and connection with Fortaleza's urban network.

The architecture adopts bioclimatic principles, prioritizing cross ventilation, natural lighting, solar protection, and the use of local materials, such as cobogós, promoting thermal comfort and regional identity. The buildings incorporate sustainable practices, reducing energy consumption and increasing environmental efficiency.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Located on Unileão's Lagoa Seca campus in Juazeiro do Norte, the new multifunctional building was conceived as a strategic element to strengthen the integration of teaching, research, culture, and community life. The building houses the Central Library, a thousand-seat auditorium, classrooms, healthcare laboratories, and administrative departments. These spaces are interconnected by open-plan and lounge areas that foster social interaction and encourage users to stay.

The design emphasizes dialogue with the rest of the campus and also serves as a gateway to the Veterinary Hospital. One of the project's highlights is the large grandstand that connects the entrance plaza to the auditorium foyer, becoming a meeting and contemplation space with a privileged view of the Chapada do Araripe and taking advantage of natural ventilation. More than just a topographical transition element, this grandstand serves a social and symbolic function, solidifying itself as a landmark on campus.

The building's materiality reinforces its connection to the surrounding area. Its reinforced concrete structure ensures robustness and rational construction, while the solid ceramic brick walls, produced locally, contribute to both climate control and the project's identity. On the east and west facades, hollow bricks filter intense sunlight, promoting thermal comfort—a key factor in the region's semi-arid climate.

The project incorporates indoor and outdoor gardens with native or adapted species, creating a pleasant microclimate through evaporative cooling. These gardens go beyond landscaping, playing a functional and environmental role, contributing to sustainability and the well-being of users.

The spatial organization follows a rational logic. The 8 x 10-meter structural modulation optimizes execution, reduces costs, and ensures flexibility of use over time, allowing the building to adapt to new demands and extend its useful life. Between the main volumes, a shaded roof connects the blocks and provides a space protected from the sun, expanding the outdoor living areas.

The ensemble's volume is notable for the contrast between the orthogonal blocks and the auditorium's elliptical shape. This choice breaks the rigidity of the composition and adds dynamism and architectural identity to the ensemble.

More than just an academic building, Unileão's new multifunctional building is a cultural, social, and environmental infrastructure, deeply rooted in the territory and sensitive to the local climate and cultural conditions. By valuing regional materials, integrating the landscape, and creating meeting spaces, the project reflects the campus's vocation as a space for knowledge, belonging, and well-being.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Semear cinzas (2024) initiative, conceived by artist Ana Lúcia Canetti, featured photographer Mariana Alves and was part of the Coordenadas […] event, held by the Graduate Program in Visual Arts at the University of Brasília. The event, which has been running for 10 years under the coordination of Professor Karina Dias, seeks to interrupt, even briefly, routine relationships with the landscape, reinventing connections with urban space through collective actions.

Ana Lúcia Canetti is a visual artist, ceramist and PhD candidate in Visual Arts at UnB. She holds a degree in Visual Arts from the Faculty of Arts of Paraná (2007), a master's degree in Psychology from UFSC (2010), in the research line "Ethical and aesthetic relationships and creative processes", and a degree in psychology from UFPR (2004).

For the work, the artist produced twenty ceramic pieces. Some were fired at high temperatures and glazed with ash; others were fired at low temperatures using the raku and raku nu techniques, in which soot from the vegetable firing is inscribed on the pieces, creating dots and lines.

Each participant chose one of these pieces and walked through a pine monoculture area in Brasília, DF, sowing plant ash harvested from different regions of the Cerrado. Some blew it, others spread it with their fingers or threw it into the air. Before the walk, they received instructions with the following instructions:

Choose a seed made of clay and fire
Try to read the messages left by the burning
What is written by soot in the earth's fractures?
What do the colors of the glazes reveal?

Walk in a group and sow ashes
Try to read what is advertised and fall to the ground
What do these little dust clouds tell us?

Being in the world is gardening other species
And also be the object of your sowings
What are we sowing? How are we being gardened?

I invite you to sow the glow of an extinguished fire,
Redistributing meanings of life in the darkness of the landscapes,
Bypassing repetitions,
Touching infertile soils,
Spreading sparks that can still light us up.

The work was inspired by the book *The Sower – On Contemporary Nature*, by Emanuele Coccia (2022). For the author, sowing is a form of illumination: a “distribution of astral light in terrestrial space,” created by fragments of matter that capture sunlight in the “mineral and gray flesh of the earth” (p. 30). Coccia proposes an analogy between the sower and the painter: both manipulate light as they attempt to redesign the world. The landscape, in this context, is less a geological figure and more an economy of light. Sowing and painting thus become a politics of light—“an act of setting the sun and its astral force elsewhere in the cosmos” (p. 45).

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Cobogó Alberobello is the result of ongoing, independent research by Raquel Finotti of Talpa Design, who investigates the potential for reusing waste from various sources. This specific project focuses on construction waste.

Each module of the project contains 62% of recycled aggregates, sourced from materials carefully separated, crushed, and prepared for incorporation into the mix, transforming what would otherwise be considered waste into valuable raw materials. This dedication ensures that each piece carries not only a practical function but also conveys the narrative of care and attention at every stage of the process.

The naturally reddish hue of cobogó is the result of tile and brick waste, creating an organic palette that eliminates the need for artificial colors and captures the essence of clay. By incorporating these crushed fragments into the design, a unique aesthetic is revealed, combining innovation, memory, and sustainability.

Beyond aesthetics, Cobogó Alberobello performs important architectural functions: it modulates light input, promotes ventilation, and adds texture to spaces, providing comfort and visual poetry. Its versatile geometry allows for multiple layouts, offering compositional freedom and ensuring that each assembly is unique, adapting to the needs and desires of each project.

The cobogó's design connects with Brazilian tradition while also evoking Mediterranean references, recalling historic cities and landscapes steeped in memory. The result is a piece that transcends practical function and transforms urban waste into architectural poetry, reaffirming the ability to find beauty, meaning, and sustainability in what was once mere waste.

Cobogó Alberobello epitomizes the search for more conscious architectural solutions, demonstrating that it is possible to combine creativity, environmental responsibility, and aesthetic sensitivity in each module produced.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Interest in new materials has guided the research and practice of Estúdio RAIN, which since 2019 has been dedicated to researching plant resin derived from castor oil.

Initially, the studio focused on experimenting with the biomaterial, seeking to expand its use beyond its traditional application as a thin-layer varnish. The goal was to enable the molding of large volumes of the material. This phase resulted in amber-toned light filters—the resin's natural color. Subsequently, the material's purity was challenged by the introduction of air during the curing process. The increased bubble content gave the resin a whitish, translucent appearance, enabling the development of organically shaped foam membranes used as light diffusers.

The Rícino C series represents a third advancement in this research. In it, plant-based polymers are combined with natural aggregates to create composite materials. Organic and mineral elements—such as flowers, fruits, roots, algae, seeds, and rocks—are incorporated into the resin, resulting in surfaces with different textures, densities, and hues, which can be applied to various functions.

Amidst this plurality, the presence of the granule is the unifying factor. It concentrates the material's intrinsic information, defining its visual and technical characteristics. The granule, however, does not exist in isolation: its essence manifests itself in accumulation—whether by dispersing and coloring the resin, or by sedimenting and conferring hardness and opacity.

Exploring new possibilities, a collection of orthogonal lines was created that highlight the material's enigmatic character. Robust and silent, almost monolithic volumes are articulated through visible joints, revealing connections. The Rícino C series expresses the organic nature of the plant-based polymer and its capacity for transformation, highlighting the material's versatility and beauty.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Every city transforms. At the household level, children grow older and move out, freeing up rooms that become offices; parents age, abandoning homes to return to live with children or caregivers. Small changes in the master plan cause houses to lose their real estate value and become seen merely as land—major demolitions make way for new residents or the investment market. In the commercial sector, shopping mall stores rotate at high speed to keep up with trends, while corporate offices close and open with the immaterial fluidity of the stock market. Behind a contemporary so-called digital world, to which immaterial words like fog and liquid are associated, persists a material universe that, for convenience, we forget.

The vertigo of coming into contact with what the city throws away every day is an experience shared by few architects. Every day, a team tours buildings slated for demolition or radical transformation in search of reusable elements.

The Archive serves as a temporary home for architectural elements through the temporary lease of a space in the Ondina neighborhood of Salvador. Check-in, storage, sorting, cataloging, recovery, and resale take place at the headquarters. Buildings constructed from the archive are often an amalgamation of parts of the city, but the opposite can also happen: a building is dissolved into dozens of small renovations.

The work tells the three stages of the process of dismantling and building from what already exists in the world.

Project implementation: Argentina and Germany
Project development: Argentina and Germany

Every year, more than 10 million tons of marine shells—primarily from oysters, clams, scallops, and mussels—are discarded as waste. This project explores how marine resources, often overlooked as byproducts, can serve as a basis for material experimentation in architecture, design, crafts, and science. It highlights innovative practices with materials that redefine the relationship between the built environment and the ecosystems that sustain it.

Spanning multiple scales—from buildings and building elements to materials value chains—the project examines how design can foster new interdependencies between materials, construction, and ecological systems.
At the heart of this exploration is the collaborative research of environmental architect Angie Dub and experimental designer Heidi Jalkh, who are transforming discarded seashells into a sustainable material for the built environment. By combining crushed seashells with algae-based biopolymers, they produce a heat-free bioceramic composed entirely of marine biomass. This practice-based research rethinks bioregional value chains, exploring the potential of marine food waste in urban areas such as Buenos Aires and Berlin, where the designers are based.

Through prototypes, raw materials, molded components, and test samples developed during the research phase, the project provides an in-depth exploration of material transformation from shell to tile.

CONQ presents an emerging modular construction system, illustrating the potential application of this shell-based bioceramic and pointing to future research directions. Furthermore, the material samples showcase the diverse colors and finishes that naturally arise from different shell species, demonstrating the material's inherent variability and the design's balance between mechanical performance and aesthetic versatility.

The project highlights the urgency of transitioning from extractive material practices to regenerative and circular economies. Rather than viewing raw materials as inert, extractable resources, it proposes a systemic and dynamic approach, one that recognizes the deep interconnections between materials, buildings, and the ecosystems that sustain them.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

TEMPO is a multidisciplinary architectural practice that seeks the constant materialization of the intangible into reality, based in São Paulo and directed by architects Luiz Sakata (Bauru, 1995 – FAU-USP/FAUP-Porto) and Augusto Longarine (Jundiaí, 1995 – FAU-USP/Politecnico di Milano).

RIBASMARÇAL is an architecture and urban planning practice based in São Paulo and Baixada Santista. Guided by the synthesis of "knowledge" and "doing," it seeks to coordinate all stages of the architectural process. Under the direction of architect Marcelo Ribas Marçal (Santos, 1997 – Mackenzie Presbyterian University), the firm works across different scales and contexts.

The Bela Vista Biological Refuge in Foz do Iguaçu is recognized as an Outpost of the Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve (RBMA) and is part of the Paraná River biodiversity corridor, connecting important conservation areas such as the Iguaçu and Ilha Grande National Parks. Founded in 1984, it provides shelter for wild animals rescued from the reservoir, reforests riparian forests, and maintains a breeding protocol for wild animals, especially for key endangered species. The refuge is open to the public and focuses on demonstrating biodiversity conservation initiatives, sustainable development, and the promotion of scientific knowledge, receiving approximately 30,000 visitors annually. The proposal to requalify the Refuge is the result of a National Public Competition promoted by Itaipu Binacional and carried out by IAB-PR, whose project uses strategies of minimal intervention, redefinition of spaces and formal simplicity to reorganize the tourist and operational flows of the complex, allowing the expansion of its visitation potential and the well-being of the animals.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Between 2021 and 2023, a multidisciplinary team led by landscape architects developed three park projects for Rio's North Zone: Inhaúma Park (47,000 m²), Costa Barros Park (28,350 m²), and Pavuna Park (14,434 m²), the latter built and inaugurated in 2024. Located in neighborhoods marked by low social development indices, the projects share similar programs, concepts, and budgetary challenges, conceived in dialogue with the demands of municipal management and community leaders to become green and open public facilities, anchoring areas for coexistence, leisure, and learning.

In Parque Carioca Pavuna, a 22-meter-high sculpture evokes the roots of the mangrove forest, from which jets of water gush during the day and beams of light at night. Adjacent to the wetland, sand surfaces reinterpret the uses of the coastal landscape, already so beloved by Rio residents. In Parque Inhaúma, on the banks of the Timbó River, extensive drainage gardens help detain and infiltrate water to mitigate flooding during extreme weather events. In Parque Costa Barros, the sports program expands into residual spaces in the immediate surrounding area, transforming a currently impassable frontier into a porous edge.

Through the contemporary pillars of Landscape Architecture, the balance between abiotic preexisting habitats, attention to vegetation, and a versatile program give the three designed parks a unique identity. The result aligns with the principles of climate justice by promoting the expansion of quality open spaces, contributing to the environmental regeneration and urban resilience of Rio's historically neglected areas.

Project development: Brazil

This panel presents an excerpt from the international project TF/TK – Translating Ferro / Transforming Knowledge into Architecture, Design and Work, a Brazil-UK initiative dedicated to creating and consolidating the field of Production Studies. Inspired by the critical thinking of architect Sérgio Ferro, the project investigates the relationship between conception and execution in architecture, questioning the historical separation between design and construction site and valuing labor and construction knowledge.

The exhibition brings together three main themes: the trajectory of TF/TK and its contribution to the international dissemination of Ferro's ideas; a brief introduction to the first two experimental houses he built in the early 1960s, which explored new construction solutions and forms of on-site production; and the scaled-down model of the Bernardo Issler House, produced in 2025 at IAU-USP as a pedagogical practice linked to Production Studies.

In the case of the model, the pedagogical aspect takes center stage: it was conceived not as a simple formal representation of the house, but as a tool for investigation and collective learning. By reconstructing the original construction logic of the Bernardo Issler House on a reduced scale, participants were led to discuss the political issues involved, as well as the technical and material choices. Each assembly gesture became a reflection on the project and the work, bringing the teaching practice closer to the construction site.

More than a formal synthesis, the reduced model presented here becomes a pedagogical artifact: a learning and critical device that invites us to rethink architectural training from the construction process. Incorporated as an instrument of a pedagogy of production, it materializes concepts, articulates knowledge, encourages dialogue, and points to other teaching possibilities—less hierarchical, more cooperative, and closer to the material reality of architectural practice.

We are immensely grateful to Sérgio Ferro and family and Bernardo Issler and family for the collections made available; to the participants in the workshops and dissemination courses; to the technicians at IAU-USP; and to the research support institutions.

Project implementation: Brazil, Switzerland
Project development: Brazil, Switzerland

Just a few kilometers from the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon, Manaus was founded in 1669 and long remained a small town in the middle of the Amazon rainforest until, in the late 19th century, it received an extraordinary boost thanks to the hevea brasiliensis, or rubber tree. The indispensable role that rubber played in the Industrial Revolution, earning it the nickname "white gold," suddenly transformed this remote location into the prosperous and populous "Paris of the Tropics," one of the first Brazilian cities to receive electricity and home to the famous Amazonas Theater, whose construction condensed the finest craftsmanship and manufacturing excellence of the Old World. Today, having overcome the rubber fever, Manaus remains an important financial and cultural center of Brazil, boasting the largest river port in the Amazon river system and a thriving fishing port. This flourishing economy, which also benefits from a thriving tourism industry, has been threatened by the terrible drought that recently hit the Amazon region, as well as the severe phenomena of deforestation and fires.

WISH set out to investigate the delicate balance of this urban "island" in the middle of the Amazon and reflect—through collective housing design—on the possibilities of continuing to inhabit this extraordinary ecosystem in light of a renewed environmental sensitivity. Thanks to the exceptional contribution of NAMA (Núcleo Arquitetura Moderna na Amazônia), which has dedicated itself for years to understanding how contemporary architectural demands can be integrated into the complex and delicate Amazonian balance, fifteen project sites were identified—one for each student—helping us understand and address the thematic issues of living in the rainforest: we explored local construction techniques, understood the role of shade and connection to the ground in the Amazonian reality, reflected on the continuity between interior and exterior in relation to the specific climatic conditions of this place, and worked on the necessary "ductility" of architectural objects that must cope with a seasonal fluctuation in the water level of the Rio Negro, which can reach fourteen meters.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The search for available land in the tangled web of cities only reveals a dynamic that seems to be reaching its limit, whether in urban, social, or economic terms. It's no longer possible to expand roads for cars, it's no longer feasible to extend the urban network and infrastructure beyond what already exists, and it's no longer acceptable to spend hours of the day commuting. The irrationality of lot layouts and the lack of use in such dense areas seems absurd, but it can also be an opportunity.

Thus, the old parking lots, built in very precarious, almost temporary conditions, become potential spaces. Are parking lots losing their power? Are they giving up space to urban dwellers? It's not yet possible to say for sure, but perhaps we are experiencing a moment of transition, where new urban values are being constructed and materialized. A new imaginary of urban life can be glimpsed.

Given this context, small actions that may seem insignificant when viewed within the territorial scale, have a major impact when viewed from the perspective of the neighborhood and the building. By symbolically and physically taking the place of a former parking lot, the Bem Viver General Jardim 415 Building, built in downtown São Paulo, takes advantage of an already established urban environment and enhances the positive aspects of living in the center of a large metropolis, combining diverse uses with housing, tied to existing infrastructure.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Território-parque project is based on the enormous challenge of revitalizing and creating urban, architectural, and landscape solutions so that the Córrego do Feijão community – the main impacted by the dam collapse in January 2019 – can remain and reconnect with the place of its origin and history.
The term "Park Territory" announces the purpose of connecting urban space to the landscape in which it is located, strengthening people's relationship with nature. The design strategy is guided by a socio-environmental connection present in each solution adopted, originating from the appreciation of water as a central element for life in this territory, and emphasizing the universalization of basic sanitation that incorporates alternative water supply options, the implementation of comprehensive sewage collection and treatment, and the proper disposal of solid waste.
On the one hand, the proposals presented seek to meet the values, expectations, and purposes expressed by the community, whose input was obtained through a series of meetings hosted by the Kairós Institute, which led to the socio-environmental integration of the planned actions. Additionally, and to expand and recognize these ideas from a systemic territorial perspective, the project relied on the reflection of a multidisciplinary team comprised of professionals from areas such as architecture, urban planning, environmental sustainability, biology, sanitation, landscaping, design, lighting and communications, and various engineering specialties.
The Territory-Park project is composed of four large contiguous and integrated areas – Central Area, Football Field, Ecological Park and Symbolic Area -, which maintain their particularities and will be presented independently, according to the planning of their sequential execution.
The architectural and landscaping programs of the Território-parque are conceptually based on the use and display of water resources through bodies of water, pools and conduction and irrigation channels.
Water will be constantly present in the various intervention areas. Architectural and landscape elements will serve as functional structures, increasing the village's air humidity and water availability for garden irrigation, recreational, and productive uses, contributing to increased green cover and reduced particle emissions.
Water also becomes a primordial element in the redefinition of Córrego do Feijão, by constituting new landscape and symbolic ensembles.
The Território-Parque project proposes the implementation of effluent collection and treatment networks for the entire community. The sanitation proposals present environmentally efficient solutions with low implementation and operating costs—such as constructed springs and filter gardens—that consider local topographical attributes and landscape values, contributing to the health of the population and environmental preservation.
The reconstruction of the community's living and social spaces, as a comprehensive reparation project, constitutes the redefinition of Córrego do Feijão, complementing and integrating the scope of MACh Arquitetos. New uses, or existing uses that required relocation or transformation (such as the soccer field and the symbolic area), have taken on new meanings in the reconstruction of social, cultural, economic, territorial, and symbolic ties.
Along with the implementation of the Territory-Park Project, actions are underway to strengthen local capacities for the management of new community facilities and the promotion of small economic enterprises, with a Network Economy approach, as well as the allocation of properties for social housing and uses complementary to the local economy and the land regularization of the entire urban center of Córrego do Feijão.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Santa Teresa territory corresponds to a predominantly residential urban area with varying densities characterized by rugged topography.

Part of its territory stands out for its privileged view of the Guaíba River, the Jacuí Delta and the city, especially the coastline, the Brazilian Marine Park and the historic center of Porto Alegre.

a unique way to get closer to the water and the natural beauty of the region.
As in countless metropolises, the topography sets a natural limit to the expansion of intensive urban occupation in the consolidated city. In the case of Santa Tereza Hill, the community developed in areas at the interface between the formal and informal city, presenting sectors with precarious and vulnerable territorial occupations.

the social fragility and urban imbalance that currently mark the territory demand interventions capable of looking at this context and seeking elements that enhance the existing value.

Thus, the main point of the project is a search to give visibility to the communities, and reveal these public spaces to the rest of the city, positioning the small interventions in a subtle way, but so that they can be identified from a distance, from the banks of the Guaíba.

efforts to reduce distances and transform the formal and informal into a single city.

This premise translates into a design strategy: an opportunity to build striking and permanent elements, affirming a common identity for this network of public spaces.

the defined public and community areas stand out for their transformative potential for the landscape and emphasize the importance of central and meeting spaces.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Cultivating Cities is a speculative Amazonian narrative that uses imagination as a tool for designing cities, territories, and futures. Initially conceived as a book, the work is now presented as an exhibition panel. This composition materializes a journey through the Amazon basin and invites the audience to reflect on architecture and urbanism through a fictional universe.

We follow the diary of Tawa, a young woman living on the banks of the Rio Negro River who, over the course of fifteen days, travels the Amazon River between Manaós (present-day Manaus) and Mairi (present-day Belém). On the map of her journey, we can read excerpts from her diary and visit floating cities, regenerated territories, and amphibious architectures that emerge after an environmental collapse in 2030. In this panel, the text occupies the center: fictional excerpts are highlighted in white, while black text provides context.

This project stems from the desire to build cities from a space-time perspective distinct from current models. Although the Amazon is home to the world's largest tropical forest and 20% of the planet's freshwater, 76% of its 28 million inhabitants live in urban areas with the lowest per capita access to drinking water in the country. This contradiction between abundance and poverty results from exogenous urban models that are alien to local reality and knowledge. After all, we only preserve what we know; we only build what we dream of.

This is where fiction comes in as an architectural tool. By constructing the obvious, fiction opens a testing ground for projecting futures that escape the limits of the present. We propose looking to the traditional knowledge of the Amazon as mirrors that allow us to rethink our way of being, transforming the end into a new beginning.

Rather than heralding exhaustion, this presents a historical-utopian narrative in which the riverside and Indigenous city takes center stage, charting paths that enable the conception of diverse futures. This universe reconnects us to the ancestral knowledge rooted in the multiple Amazonian territorialities, calling upon it to regenerate territories and build collective futures.

This utopia emerges from a theoretical framework that articulates recent research on the Amazon, including that of Eduardo Góes Neves and Violeta Loureiro on the history of the region's occupation. It engages with the critical ecology of Danowski and Viveiros de Castro and the work of Ailton Krenak and Antonio Bispo, who revive Indigenous and Quilombola cosmologies as keys to the future. It is also inspired by the ch'ixi thought of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, which helps us understand coexistence and tensions in plural worlds.

These are also narratives we hear in conversations with fishermen, cooks, friends, and relatives throughout our travels and daily lives. In them, utopia appears not as a distant abstraction, but as a concrete practice of imagination and resistance, in which we, Amazonians, take on the responsibility of thinking about and designing our future.
This project is being developed by Lab Igarité, a research and creative studio situated between architecture, art, and urban planning. The Lab is an initiative of Natalia and Isabella, Amazonian architects and researchers. With backgrounds ranging from Manaus to Belém, we consider the city through its waters, riverbanks, and local knowledge. We seek to cultivate urban narratives and propose an investigative architecture, in which words and imagination become tools to reveal invisible layers, build shared memories, and invent more sensitive and just ways of living.

Project implementation: Mexico
Project development: Mexico

TEMIS rises like a circle of earth and time, the first self-supporting 3D-printed earth building in Latin America. Constructed in Mexico City with a WASP crane, its circular form arises from the movement of a robotic arm that, in 360 degrees, designs a habitable social space and, at the same time, an experimental pavilion for encounter and collective reflection. Its parametric facade pushes the earth to its limit: lines that expand beyond the base perimeter, creating a movement that responds to light and projects ever-changing shadows. Each quadrant of the building offers a distinct experience, revealing the dialogue between digital technology and ancient matter.

Inside, geometry becomes rhythm; the buttress walls, solid and sculptural, support not only the volume but also the confidence in the face of the city's seismic memory. Atop this earthen ring rests the laminated wood crown, a precise circle that encapsulates the constructive gesture, uniting warmth and stability. There, where earth and wood, tradition and future meet, the essence of TEMIS is revealed: an architecture that does not impose, but accompanies.

TEMIS's parametric façade is also a field of experimentation. Its formation arises from modules and waves that interfere with each other, generating unique patterns and frequencies that are visually revealed in each section of the building. It is not restricted to the base circle: it expands, projects outward, and creates an undulating rhythm, as if the material had been sculpted by the passage of the wind. Each quadrant offers a distinct experience. The lines extend, bend, and curve, producing a movement that is never the same as it traverses the building. The light accompanies this gesture: at certain moments it accentuates the deep shadows and, at others, softens the walls until they vibrate with the surroundings. More than a border, the façade becomes a kinetic expression: a wall in constant transformation, guiding the eye and converting the journey into a sequence of ever-renewed perspectives.

Developing the mix was one of the project's greatest challenges. The material needed to reach a state between viscous and plastic: fluid enough to be extruded by the printer, yet stable enough to support the weight of subsequent layers. The final formulation used a fine-medium particle size, incorporating small fibers and sand to improve gradation. A local sandy soil, with clays and silts, was used to provide the necessary cohesion, while always controlling the water percentage: excess water could compromise strength and increase shrinkage.

In the initial phase, mixtures containing hydraulic lime were tested, which allowed us to understand the behavior of a stabilized material. However, the final TEMIS mix was made using only soil, sand, fibers, and water reducers, without the addition of cementing agents. Before construction, several samples were prepared and subjected to compression tests in the laboratory, achieving a strength of 31 kg/cm², a remarkable value for stabilized soil. These tests made it possible to adjust proportions, control shrinkage, and achieve a balance between plasticity and strength. The final mix was validated by civil engineers using models and seismic simulations, confirming reliable structural behavior. Its performance is directly linked to the geometric and parametric design of TEMIS, in which the curved walls and buttresses collaborate with the material to consolidate the stability of the entire structure.

More than a destination, this process represents a beginning. TEMIS opens an experimental path in which each advance opens the possibility of improving resistance and performance. The experience demonstrates that 3D-printed earth construction is not a hypothetical future, but rather a present and necessary response to the environmental and social challenges of our time.

Project development: Colombia, Brazil, USA

Emerging technologies have the potential to disrupt human nature, social life, and the natural world at a fundamental level. As “deep technologies,” the essence of nature is reconfigured for human purposes. This exhibition’s triptych poses fundamental questions about deep technology associated with material invention, material cultures, and material substitution as a product of interconnected global modernist socioeconomic, political, and architectural agendas in the Amazon Trapezium, where Brazil, Colombia, and Peru converge. The designs surrounding the region’s traditional woven palm, harvested over centuries, indicate the inherited material cultures and complex sociotechnological processes that have occurred since the mid-20th century in the Amazon Trapezium. These substantial transformations in material culture over the past hundred years cannot be understood as an isolated phenomenon that led to a radical loss of the material culture of palm thatch through strategically imposed material sovereignties. In principle, the democratization of 3D printing of native palms can open pathways for the recovery of material culture. The triptych in this exhibition addresses this perspective by discussing material productions, perspectives on value, and scalability. The work presented was developed by Dr. Maria Paz Gutierrez, Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, through material, typological, and ethnographic research with six indigenous communities. The palm tree research was accompanied by collaborations with visual artist Donald Gensler. The exhibition presents the culmination of this research, articulating questions about the future role of technological innovations in the construction of this region.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

One of the major impacts of the environmental crisis is the extinction of animal species. Working to maintain and preserve wildlife, especially those that are threatened, is one of the main challenges facing us today if we want to continue coexisting with nature. This highlights the importance of the work of the NGO Aquasis – the Association for Research and Preservation of Aquatic Ecosystems – for its work to preserve endangered animal species in northeastern Brazil, with a focus on the biodiversity of Ceará.

Operating for over 30 years, the NGO has headquarters on Picos Beach, in Icapuí, on the eastern coast of Ceará. In 2020, driven by the institution's demand for spaces for visitors and the dissemination of knowledge about environmental conservation in the region, we began work on the Banco dos Cajuais Visitor Center project. With a limited budget and schedule, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenge of designing this project has remained a part of our practice to this day. So far, two blocks have been built: the first (2020-2021) is a more enclosed pavilion for exhibitions; the second (2023-2024), more open, will accommodate larger groups and provide restroom infrastructure for the complex. In addition to the blocks, the site's internal flow and access wall were also redesigned.

Other structures for the complex are still under development and may be implemented in the future. In other words, this was, and continues to be, a project conceived over time, and rather than presenting the spaces that have been designed and built since then, we propose presenting this project in three phases.

The first phase—construction—is based on a phased interpretation. Thus, beyond a composition of isolated elements, the project is conceived as a system that, in its phases, possesses a pavilion-like logic composed of niches that adapt and adapt to the specificities of each moment and program. The second phase is that of light, which we leverage as a compositional element: whether through the inversion between the white and light volumes that conceal small openings during the day that disappear at night, giving way to small beams of artificial light, or through the strategic placement of openings such as the square void in the second building of the complex, which allows light to enter and mark the passage of day into the interior space, or even through the white gables that serve as a screen against the irregular shadows of the surrounding vegetation. Finally, considering time in architecture means considering its dimension of use and appropriation. Thus, the spaces created are imbued with amplitude and indeterminacy, allowing for the most diverse activities to take place. Following the appropriations of these spaces and learning from them makes the project acquire a character of incompleteness, not finalized upon delivery of the work, but continuing to exist and resist, enhancing its uses and appropriations, including the most unforeseen and improbable.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The documentary Carpinteiros da Amazônia is the result of research by Guá Arquitetura, dedicated to recording and promoting riverside carpentry, an ancestral craft that has shaped the way of life of Amazonian communities for centuries.

The work covers islands and riverbanks, such as Murutucu, Combu, Acará and Marajó, revealing that carpentry is not just a construction technique, but also a cultural manifestation that expresses ways of life, family memories and deep ties with the forest and rivers.

The film captures the way Amazonian dwellings are built, bearing the unique mark of their masters, artisans who transform wood into shelter and identity.
The narrative is driven by the stories of Masters such as Josa, Edson, Oseas, Edinaldo, and Valdiley, who represent different trajectories within the craft, their perspectives represented by authorial lines that stand out from one another, like an artist's own. At the same time, the documentary does not shy away from the challenges that threaten this legacy: the replacement of wood with masonry, the predatory exploitation of forests, the lack of public policies to promote their value, and, above all, the growing disinterest of new generations in pursuing the craft.

More than a documentary, the film serves as a manifesto of resistance. It seeks to raise awareness of the importance of keeping alive a practice that synthesizes technical and cultural knowledge and reflects a balanced relationship between society and nature. The documentary shows how master carpenters share their knowledge and reinforce the social dimension of carpentry, strengthening the self-esteem and relevance of communities.

The film, therefore, doesn't simply chronicle the past of a tradition. It heralds possibilities for the future, by highlighting master carpenters who continue to build with wood and by showcasing houses that have become aesthetic landmarks for the local community.
Carpinteiros da Amazônia is, therefore, a manifesto for the standing forest, for the transmission of knowledge and for the permanence of a profoundly human architecture, born from the encounter between river, wood and riverside communities.

Project implementation: Spain
Project development: Spain

DAT Alierta is poised to become Aragon's new technology district. Occupying an 80-hectare area on the northern edge of Zaragoza, it is conceived as a place where city and nature intersect. Zaragoza is a water-rich city, defined by the Ebro River, Spain's largest. The river's watershed traces a watercourse through the territory from east to west: the El Rabal or Juslibol irrigation canal. This water element acts as the catalyst for three main structural axes within the project.

First, the canal's perimeter defines a south-facing slope that benefits from ample sunlight in winter, while its naturalized riverine surroundings provide coolness in summer and reduce the area covered by hard surfaces. This configuration favors the emergence of a microclimate and intentionally incorporates biodiversity as a transformative agent in the new urban models referenced throughout the region.

Second, the canal's presence, preservation, and enhancement support the continuity of the watercourse and the restoration of the hydrological cycle, contributing to the renewal of riverside ecosystems both within and surrounding the site. This approach positions DAT Alierta as a contemporary evolution of the technology park typology, adopting an urban planning model that not only respects the local natural heritage but also seeks to achieve greater integration between built and ecological systems.

Finally, half of the designated area is already built and in use, while the other half constitutes, in Clément's terms, a form of 'third landscape,' shaped by previous urban planning that failed to consider the watercourse. Thus, the project advances with a proactive strategy of adaptive reuse, integrating the site's water heritage and transforming an obsolete and homogenizing urban scheme into a greener and more resilient city defined by blue and green infrastructure.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Tupinambá Womb Maloca is a living, symbiotic, and metamorphic form of architecture. Its form consists of a central space for the hearth, structured on double radial supports, with two laterally woven "skirts" connecting the roof to the ground, creating interior gardens that form intimate and exterior spaces that mark its entrances. Built in partnership between Floresta Cidade—an extension, teaching, and research project at FAU UFRJ—and Levanta Zabelê, the Ancestral Research and Innovation Center of the Tupinambá of Olivença, in southern Bahia. Zabelê is an Indigenous university led by women, and its principles are the exchange of knowledge, reconnection with Mother Earth, and the decolonization of territories.

Made with others—human or otherwise—it was constructed by many hands, enchantments, drawings, prayers, magic, measurements, stories, and efforts. A participatory architecture that provokes metamorphosis in those who create it, undoing colonial design attitudes. During construction, we lived collectively, shared the same food, bathed in the same waters, and shared the same territory, in an attitude of transversal coexistence, something nearly impossible in cities. This experience created a collective affection between the group and the territory, fostering a deep connection with nature and mutual respect, honoring the different beings that inhabit us and the exchange of knowledge among all living beings.

The symbiotic relationship with the landscape manifests itself not only in the visual continuity between the pillars and the existing trees, but also in the invention of materials. Driven by a desire for interspecific creation, we experimented, in partnership, with the production of mycelium tiles using coconut straw from the area. We improvised an ancient innovation laboratory and created fabrics from these straws, which we nourished along with fungal roots (mycelium) in a dark, humid environment. As the fungus colonizes the straw, it produces a waterproofing material, testable as a tile—reinforcing the existing straw—or as a lining, innovating the finish. The tests are not yet complete.

The Malaca Útero Tupinambá is a building-entity that is born, surprises, and happens. A living architecture that gains autonomy in the process and surprises us with the stories that emerge. The maloca houses our energies in its pillars, the metamorphoses of each of us in the fire at its center—which resembles a beating heart—and points to possible paths for contemporary design in Brazil. We are learning from indigenous peoples how to design and build a cosmic dwelling, including with the development of classrooms at FAU UFRJ.

The architecture of this cosmic dwelling can be felt in this maloca/roofing/skirt/process that, instead of isolating our experience of inhabiting the galaxies, connects it, extending the sky into a starry floor filled with affective experiences.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Tempo Arquitetos is a multidisciplinary architecture practice that seeks to constantly materialize the intangible into reality, based in São Paulo and led by architects Luiz Sakata (Bauru, 1995 – FAU-USP/FAUP-Porto) and Augusto Longarine (Jundiaí, 1995 – FAU-USP/Politecnico di Milano). Together, they have accumulated nationally and internationally awarded projects since 2020.

The new Boulevard São Judas Tadeu, built along a 106.5-meter linear stretch of Alameda dos Guaiós in São Paulo, Brazil, stems from the collective interest in rehabilitating strategic public spaces between the Sanctuary of São Judas and the Instituto Meninos de São Judas—important public-attraction facilities in the southern part of the city. Historically, this stretch of the Alameda served as a back façade for neighboring religious institutions, serving a strictly logistical purpose and being used intensively as a parking lot. Therefore, the focus of this area's rehabilitation was to connect the Sanctuary of São Judas Tadeu to the Chapel of São José, through the creation of pedestrian transition and permanence spaces, equipped with universal accessibility, new planted flowerbeds, and street furniture. The design of the new Boulevard is based on the manipulation of the original topography of Alameda dos Guaiós to create three programmatic plateaus – upper, intermediate and lower – with provision for grandstands, spaces for fairs, an esplanade for outdoor masses, rain gardens to restore the local microclimate, and the connection with the existing service gallery – store, café, restrooms – that connects Avenida Jabaquara to the new Boulevard.

Project implementation: India
Project development: India, Netherlands

City of 1,000 Tanks, Chennai – Holistic urban strategy to combat floods, droughts and pollution through blue-green strategies.

Chennai is at risk of running out of water in the next decade, given its projected population increase and groundwater depletion. The City of 1,000 Tanks project, part of the Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities Asia program, identifies the interrelationships between the underlying causes of flooding, water scarcity, and pollution in Chennai and offers a holistic solution to these three problems. It is developing a citywide Water Balance Model by harvesting rainwater, treating wastewater and runoff pollution with decentralized Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), and recharging both to the groundwater aquifer. This will prevent climate-change-induced droughts by increasing groundwater reserves and prevent saline intrusion from sea-level rise.

It will simultaneously mitigate risks associated with high-frequency flooding and sewage pollution. This project aims to address supply-side challenges by creating water retention and supply capacities of 200-250 MLD (Million Liters per Day) in the first two phases (compared to a current urban demand of 1,580 MLD).

The 1,000-Tank City Water Balance Pilot at Little Flower Convent School for the Blind and Deaf is a transformative demonstration project that envisions a water-abundant Chennai. Using NBS, the project repaired damaged infrastructure, harvested rainwater, and treated wastewater on-site to recharge the aquifer, thus ensuring local water security and climate resilience for Little Flower Convent, a school with 500 students with visual and hearing impairments.

This replicable and scalable demonstration project investigates the processes and steps needed to achieve the required change and aims to engage government departments, resident groups, businesses, and institutions; thus enabling implementation at district, municipal, and urban levels.

The project is funded by the Government of the Netherlands and co-financed by the Goethe Institut and the Wipro Grants Program. City of 1,000 Tanks is Chennai's first collaborative water alliance, led by OOZE architects & urbanists with Madras Terrace, IIT Madras, Care Earth Trust, Eco Village International, Atma Water, IRCDUC, Uravugal Social Welfare Trust, Paperman Foundation, Rain Center, TU-Delft, HKV, and others.

OOZE architects & urbanists was founded in 2003 by Eva Pfannes and Sylvain Hartenberg in Rotterdam. They are passionate professionals who love working in complex, rapidly evolving environments with public and cultural sector clients, focusing on the benefits to society and the natural environment. OOZE specializes in strategic and holistic systems thinking at the urban and neighborhood scale, as well as in the development of bankable concepts that mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

www.ooze.eu.com
www.cityof1000tanks.org

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Handball Arena, also known as the Arena of the Future, was the result of a public competition that focused on transforming one of the buildings used in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games into four municipal schools after the event. The winning proposal, developed by the Rio Projetos 2016 consortium, a multidisciplinary group of architecture and engineering firms—comprising Lopes Santos & Ferreira Gomes Arquitetos, Oficina de Arquitetos, MBM Serviços de Engenharia, and DW Engenharia—sought to align with predefined premises, seeking flexibility, mutability, and adaptability, reinforcing its solution's commitment to the future.

The project for the Olympic Arena and Municipal Schools is established based on five main goals: (1) Construction Methodological Organization; (2) Definition of the Main Structural Systems; (3) Planning and Definition of Materials, (4) Components and Content of both buildings; and finally, (5) Reuse and Destination Process (Disposal).

The game format accommodated 12,000 spectators with a total built area of 32,240 m². The school buildings, created by dismantling and reusing the Arena's construction elements, each occupy 6,500 m² and currently accommodate nearly 500 municipal elementary school students.

Despite the planned implementation, between 2017 and 2021, the Arena was not dismantled as planned, nor were its components stored properly due to the city's planning priorities. However, starting in 2022, the Olympic legacy regained priority, and at least 25% of the Olympic Arena's components were reused in the construction of the four Municipal Schools. Additionally, another 50% were reconditioned for recycling and reuse in various areas and institutions in the city of Rio de Janeiro, such as bleachers, chairs, and components of the large steel structures. Another 25% were discarded.

Although developed from a model project, each of the schools had its implementation adjusted according to the specificities of each site. Three of these schools (GET José Mauro de Vasconcelos in Bangu, GET Emiliano Galdino in Santa Cruz, and GET Nelcy Noronha in Campo Grande) were built to replace existing municipal schools (transitional reinforced mortar schools designed by architect João Filgueiras Lima, known as Lelé, in the 1980s). GET Mestre Diego Braga in Rio das Pedras is the only completely new school.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Yayoi Kusama Gallery houses two of the artist's installations at Inhotim: "I am here but nothing" and "Aftermath of obliteration of eternity." These works are known for attracting large crowds, inevitably leading to long lines. Therefore, the architectural design must respond not only to sheltering the artworks but also to creating a protected space for the waiting time and preparing the public for the unique experience the installations provide.
The proposed shading cover follows a principle of minimal structural use, with a succession of parallel steel cables connecting the highest point near the crest of the terrain's cutting slope to the lowest point at the opposite end of the plateau. These lines, with a subtle curvature, metaphorically reconstruct the original terrain profile in the most natural way possible. The design seeks to recognize the terrain, which underwent prior intervention to create the plateau, and also the slopes surrounding it, adapting to the given topography. The tensioned cover aims to activate the spatiality generated by the cutting.
A flexible metal mesh creates a broad support surface for the growth of a climbing plant, the exotic Congea tomentosa species introduced to Brazil in the 1960s by Burle Marx. This plant was chosen for several reasons: its density, which favors shading and some rainwater retention; its excellent adaptation to the Brazilian climate, requiring no special care; and its distinct aesthetic attributes. The Congea will convey a sense of time and continuous transformation to the project, with its inflorescences alternating in color tones of white, pink, lilac, and gray.
Under the roof, the space opens horizontally to the garden on one side and rises toward the gallery, whose design is defined by a vertical plane of weathered steel plates that runs the entire length between the side slopes. Thus, the architecture is characterized not as a detached volume, but rather as a topographical intervention directly related to the terrain's configuration.
Along the rows, whose path is defined by the different flooring materials – fine gravel and concrete tiles – small spaces with wooden benches are created, as an invitation to stay for those visiting the gallery or simply enjoying the ambiance and view.
Seen from above, as a colorful intervention in the landscape, the project connects two moments of existing vegetation – the spontaneous forest and the planned garden – and seems to conceal a magical world to be discovered by park visitors.

Project implementation: Switzerland
Project development: Switzerland, Brazil, Nicaragua

The TRC LC3 Prototype Pavilion, built by EPFL Fribourg students and researchers in collaboration with FAUFBA since 2019, serves as a proof of concept for extensive research into the structural, spatial, tectonic, and social potential of the TRC.

The development of the TRC LC3 Prototype Pavilion has investigated and adapted selected structural elements developed by João da Gama Filgueiras Lima (1932-2014) in ferrocement for textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) combined with LC3 (Limestone Cement and Calcined Clay) since 2022. This fusion of Brazilian industrial knowledge with contemporary research on non-corrosive fiber reinforcement serves as a fundamental concept for the design, mold fabrication, and casting of new slender elements in textile-reinforced concrete, forming the conceptual basis of the TRC LC3 Prototype Pavilion. The pavilion's construction is modular and designed for easy disassembly, primarily aimed at testing and demonstrating innovative and sustainable construction techniques.

The TRC LC3 Pavilion is an initial step toward adaptive tectonic systems, a modular construction approach that will undergo further development in the coming years, leading to a new lightweight construction technique. This research foresees several explorations and applications of TRC/LC3 construction on a broader scale.

The full potential of TRC LC3 as a technology for social sustainability will be assessed by analyzing its structural, spatial, and social impacts as a resilient building system in the Latin American context, especially in socially vulnerable areas. This initiative will empower local communities to actively and autonomously participate in the construction of their own social housing and community facilities, using local resources and innovative production methods whenever they deem necessary.

Consequently, the TRC LC3 Pavilion serves as a messenger to promote TRC and LC3 as socially and environmentally sustainable lightweight materials, conveying the idea of viable industrialization in both Central and Latin America, suitable for applications in social housing, urban development, and recycling programs.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The urban plan for the Piracicaba River Linear Park System, developed during the review of the city's Master Plan, seeks to establish a strategy of interventions — urban, environmental, mobility, and tourism — of an integrative nature and with recurring elements, enhancing the already consolidated connection between the city and its waters, respecting its ecology, history, and culture, in addition to enabling a cohesive territorial complex.
With the implementation of a Master Plan for the Piracicaba Riverbank, a system of sidewalks, cycle paths, public and river transport is proposed, articulating the set of existing or planned green and leisure areas, in addition to a set of strategic guidelines such as:
– Inclusion of public uses (leisure, decks, sports);
– Implementation of support infrastructure (toilets, food);
– Refurbishment of large-scale equipment (Mill, Aquarium, Theater, Boyes Factory, Museums);
– Activation of commercial fronts (next to Lar dos Velhinhos and on Nova Av. Renato Wagner) and in areas with potential for partnerships with the private sector.

This complex includes Worker's Park, with a new connection to João Herrmann Neto Park; Porto Street, with generous sidewalks, restaurants, and unobstructed views of the water; the established Beira-Rio neighborhood; as well as the former Boyes Factory and the Water Museum, and, beyond the Mirante Bridge, two new parks: Renato Wagner Park and, on the opposite bank of the river, an area for future development currently owned by Companhia City. From this point onward, an integration between traditional public spaces of recognized historical value is planned: Mirante Park, Engenho Central Park, and Bosque Park. A third pedestrian walkway over the river, disconnected from vehicle traffic, ensuring fluidity between the two banks, is also proposed.

By incorporating more leisure space along Av. Renato Wagner — a low-demand, previously neglected road — it was possible, through the redesign of the road and the removal of invasive species that obstructed the connection with the water, to activate a new leisure center for the city and promote connections with the ESALQ-USP campus.
Within the scope of this plan, the requalification project, not yet implemented, of Parque do Trabalhador was also developed, with a profile focused primarily on sports practices, in contrast to other areas of the system that have different predominant uses:
João Herrmann Neto Park, a recreational park, geared towards walking and running;
Beira-Rio and Rua do Porto section, aimed at gastronomic tourism and direct contact with the river;
Parque do Engenho Central, with large facilities and traditional festivals;
Mirante Park, with an emphasis on contemplating the river's main waterfall;
Segment of the New Renato Wagner Avenue focused on preserving the natural landscape and leisure in the middle of the forest, bringing the city and nature closer together.

Project implementation: Mexico
Project development: Mexico

Urbanization represents one of the most significant challenges of the coming decades, especially in developing countries, where uncontrolled growth and unsustainable expansion threaten both social well-being and environmental balance. Mexico, as a developing Latin American country, faces multiple challenges arising from these processes, including social inequality, insecurity, and urban sprawl, which often takes the form of territorial sprawl and vulnerable settlements.
Chiapas is among the most unequal, yet most biodiverse, entities in the country.
Its capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, is located in a mountainous basin in southern Mexico, characterized by a sub-humid tropical climate and a unique natural environment, bounded by the Grijalva River and the imposing Sumidero Canyon. Despite its natural beauty and importance as the state capital, Tuxtla faces serious urban challenges. Rapid and disorganized growth, combined with a complex topography and persistent social gaps, has displaced vulnerable communities to areas with limited infrastructure and opportunities, intensifying the need for more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban planning.
The Tuxtla Urban Improvement Program (PMU) comprises a set of concrete strategies developed through a series of projects at various scales to contribute to the rehabilitation of marginalized neighborhoods. The interventions, located in different parts of the city, range from Tuxtla's center to its outskirts, with the goal of regenerating the social fabric through infrastructure and urban amenities that promote connectivity and the development of safe environments.
The project is based on data collection supported by citizen participation, as well as brief surveys with various local groups convened by the Secretariat for Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (SEDATU) to examine insecurity, gender-based violence, crime and the needs of each location.
Thus, we developed five projects—the 5 de Mayo Plaza and Garden, the Main Plaza, the El Aguaje Park and Community Center, the 22 de Novembro Market, and the Patria Nueva Sports Complex—with the aim of improving living conditions in Tuxtla's most vulnerable neighborhoods through social reconnection.

The EUREF Campus in Berlin is a self-described "real laboratory for the energy transition," a business district currently providing around 7,000 jobs. It is located directly at Schöneberg S-Bahn station and not far from the Schöneberg highway junction.

Further development of transportation infrastructure in the area surrounding the EUREF Campus has been the subject of heated political debate for decades. With its existence and its policy of favoring sustainable mobility solutions, the EUREF Campus played a decisive role in ensuring that the federal highway was not extended further north. At the same time, local companies received incentives to electrify their vehicle fleets through the decisive promotion of electromobility on campus – nearly 100% of all parking spaces in the underground garages are capable of charging vehicles. At the same time, high prices made parking unattractive to employees, regardless of whether they own electric or combustion engine vehicles.

The decisive factor for this sustainable development was the scientific consultancy of the interdisciplinary Research Campus Mobility2Grid (M2G), led by the TU Berlin (Technical University of Berlin) and the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), together with industrial partners such as Siemens and Schneider Electric.

The site's owner, EUREF AG, not only followed M2G's mobility concept but also installed a microgrid with bidirectional charging facilities for electric cars, scooters, and bicycles, as proposed by M2G in 2014. The electrification of all parking spaces, car-sharing offerings, and electric-based micromobility are the cornerstones of the concept. Fewer than 10% of the 7,000 people currently working on the campus commute by car.

Combined with on-site sustainable energy production, the EUREF Campus offers an exceptional example of sector coupling between the transport and energy transitions. Furthermore, the EUREF Campus only builds energy-efficient buildings, and much of the old fabric is reused and renovated in a climate-neutral manner. The interior design of the former gasometer is a prime example.

Many companies, especially young ones, and research institutions from the fields of energy, environmental protection, and mobility, developing ecologically and economically sustainable solutions, have established themselves here since the site's development began in 2008. The EUREF Campus has been meeting the German government's CO2 climate protection targets for 2045 since 2014. This highly visible former symbol of the fossil fuel era is now a landmark in the sustainable conversion of former industrial sites.

This allows us to draw conclusions about the urban integration of new or existing (business) districts into their environment: transport policy and urban planning should be more closely intertwined; instead of new districts in greenfields (virgin areas), new settlements should be preceded by sustainable transport infrastructures and not, as is still common, succeeded by them.

Project implementation: Chile
Project development: Chile

Unregulated urban expansion and growing pressure on coastal ecosystems have intensified ecological fragmentation, biodiversity loss, and increased socio-environmental risk in several Chilean cities. In response, Law 21.202 (2020), which establishes legal protection for urban wetlands, emerges as an opportunity to redefine the city-nature relationship, both through territorial design and through integrated, multi-level governance. The central challenge, however, lies in translating regulatory frameworks, scientific knowledge, and social demands into spatially coherent and applicable public policies. The case of the Rocuant-Andalién Wetlands System, in the metropolitan region of Concepción, highlights such socio-ecological conflicts and the institutional fragmentation that limits their resolution.
Within the scope of the GEF Coastal Wetlands Project, of the Ministry of the Environment and UNEP, this study proposes the development of a land use and urban design plan that integrates ecological conservation with urban, social, and governance needs. The proposal is based on three axes: (i) articulating prior environmental diagnoses with an urban-spatial analysis of the system; (ii) prioritizing restoration areas as projective ecological infrastructure and a city-nature interface; (iii) employing design as a tool for intersectoral mediation between the State, communities, academia, and the private sector.
The methodology combines documentary review, fieldwork, projective cartographic analysis, and participatory workshops with multiple institutional and civil society stakeholders. The result is the creation of a Border Area System (BAS), a territorial framework that structures decisions on restoration, risk protection, and land use management, facilitating coordination across planning scales and levels of government.
The final product is a Master Plan for Spatial Planning and Urban Design that recognizes wetlands as critical ecological infrastructure and, at the same time, as a catalyst for an emerging model of territorial governance. The visions developed for four emblematic sectors address specific urban-environmental conflicts and offer solutions that combine green infrastructure, public space, and ecologically adapted housing. More than just a design (understood as a means, not an end), the plan consolidates itself as an experimental instrument for institutional coordination, capable of mobilizing projects, resources, and agreements among multiple actors, strengthening more resilient governance in urban areas marked by the climate and ecological crisis. As practical evidence, a systematic and detailed inventory of the initiatives, projects, and funding derived from the master plan is presented.

Project implementation: Pakistan
Project development: Pakistan, Gambia, United Kingdom

SHAPES is a multi-year research project evaluating the effectiveness of structural adaptations to extreme heat in Pakistan, implemented in urban and rural locations in Karachi and Sindh province.
Pakistan faces significant challenges related to climate change, including rising average temperatures and more frequent and intense heat waves, amidst rapid urbanization. These trends are already translating into health impacts: higher rates of heat-related illnesses (heat exhaustion and heat stroke), dehydration, and kidney stress; exacerbations of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, along with impaired sleep and mental health. Pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and people with chronic conditions face the greatest risk, with extreme heat linked to adverse pregnancy outcomes.
In dense urban settlements, common building typologies offer limited shading or cross-ventilation while storing heat overnight. In rural areas, thin screened structures and sparse services intensify daytime peaks and interrupt recovery. Intermittent power and water supplies, overcrowded housing, and air pollution amplify exposure and limit access to effective cooling.
SHAPES focuses on the potential effectiveness of several low-cost, high-impact building-scale measures, including lightweight, locally sourced shading (woven bamboo structures), lime-based mortars, solar-reflective paints, building cladding, additional ventilation, shade structures, selective planting where feasible, and small solar photovoltaic installations to maintain essential fans and lighting during grid outages. These interventions are delivered as part of a broader community-led community action.
These interventions are being evaluated as part of two cluster-randomized controlled trials (one urban, one rural) led by the Aga Khan University in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. The trials evaluate clinical effectiveness with a primary outcome of heat-related illness, and secondary outcomes including indoor temperature and thermal comfort, personal exposure and physiology, service use, and maternal health outcomes.
Research and data collection include the use of drone thermography and LiDAR-based building measurements, along with parametric thermal modeling and rapid home suitability surveys using images, video, and questionnaires. A custom data platform was developed to organize and analyze high-volume survey information for informal housing, supporting site- and building-specific proposals that can be implemented at low cost and enabling community-led decision-making on where and how interventions are installed. Measuring at the house and neighborhood scales makes it possible to identify local heat island patterns and evaluate neighborhood-scale approaches to reducing urban heat accumulation.
Joseph Augustin — Environmental designer and architect; Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer, The Bartlett, UCL. Founding director of Heat Island (London).
Christopher Burman — Urban technologist and researcher; Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer, The Bartlett, UCL; Co-founder of Heat Island (London)
In collaboration with: Z.A. Bhutta; J.K. Das (Aga Khan University); A. Bonell; A. Haines; S. Cousens (LSHTM)

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Casa Saracura is part of a series of semi-detached houses built in the 1940s in the Bexiga neighborhood of São Paulo. In response to the current real estate speculation in the neighborhood, the house's renovation seeks to preserve its history by maintaining the original facade and the existing courtyard layout. The design principle reveals the house's original structure, as does the historic retaining wall, characteristic of the neighborhood's existing topography, which appears as a visible element from various rooms.
The Saracura Stream, normally invisible to the eye, runs right behind the property, leaving the retaining wall constantly damp. Given this unique situation, the fountain becomes the project's main symbolic element, evoking the neighborhood's memory. A tank and a waterway were proposed to collect the Saracura's waters and bring them into the courtyard, visible to all.
Located in a central area of São Paulo, Bexiga's boundaries are imprecise, but it can be understood as part of the Bela Vista district, between Paulista Avenue and Bandeira Square (old downtown), and 9 de Julho and 23 de Maio Avenues. With its rugged topography, Bexiga features several channeled waterways, invisible to the eye.
Our proposal for the 14th São Paulo Architecture Biennial seeks to understand the Bexiga region from its physical and geographic perspectives. The starting point is a diptych video: on one side, the fountain is continuously displayed; on the other, images of the urban occupation of the Saracura and Saracura Pequeno streams. These waterways remain invisible, although traces of their existence are revealed in the topography, outcrops, vegetation, and urban design.

Marina Canhadas (São Paulo, 1985), master's degree from FAUUSP, specializing in “Geography, City and Architecture” from Escola da Cidade, architect and urban planner from FAU Mackenzie, is the founder of [entre escalas] and a professor at Escola da Cidade and FAU Mackenzie.

Pedro Kok (São Paulo, 1984), architect from FAUUSP, is a photographer and videographer of architecture, urban structures and cities.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Coming soon.

Project implementation: Switzerland
Project development: Switzerland

“Öpfelchüechli” (“Fried Apple Rings”) is a film essay by David Menzi that explores the transformation of Swiss farmland into suburban sprawl and the parallel erosion of cultural memory. Central to the film is the memory of a dish from his grandmother’s kitchen, intimately linked to the apple trees that once surrounded the family home in Volketswil, a suburb of Zurich. As Menzi recalls, “Whenever I smell the aroma of the dish, I have very vivid memories of picking apples from the farmland.” Through these sensory memories, the film connects personal notes with broader issues of environmental and cultural change.
Using overlapping aerial images, found footage from the family archive, and sequences capturing the current landscape, Öpfelchüechli traces how the land was transformed into a generic suburban cluster of gas stations, parking lots, and industrial developments. The film creates a juxtaposition of different contemplative media that allows viewers to perceive both the changes in the landscape and in cultural memory.
Öpfelchüechli functions not only as a metaphor for the traces of a vanished landscape, but also as a reflection on the disappearance of biodiversity caused by urban sprawl. The film invites the audience to reflect on their own heritage and the environments they inhabit.
The film was inspired by and developed from conversations about “Urban Food” with Günther Vogt at ETH Zürich in 2022.
David Menzi (he/him, b. 1992) spent a year collaborating with professionals beyond the field of architecture in pursuit of post-disciplinary ambitions. He completed his architectural studies in Zurich, Switzerland, and Ahmedabad, India. Through his practice and encounters, Menzi explores issues of placemaking, narrative construction, collaborative processes, and more.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

We need to reforest ourselves. There is no separation between nature and people. There is only nature. Ecology encompasses everything: humans, animals, trees, rivers, fish, rain, wind, and sun. The forest is the whole, visible and invisible, a vast intelligent organism. Right now, the genes we share with the trees speak to us, and we can feel their grandeur. It's about feeling the life in others—in a mountain, in a bird—and engaging with it. The presence of other beings not only makes up the landscape, but transforms everything. Either you listen to the voice of all beings that share the planet, or you declare war on life.
The Tumbira community, previously dependent on illegal logging, deforested the forest to survive, in a cycle of subsistence without progress. With educational programs and support from the Sustainable Amazon Foundation (FAS), in 2008, they realized that the standing forest was more valuable. They shifted to ecotourism and community tourism, attracting visitors from around the world. This transition brought social progress: the construction of schools, houses, a restaurant, solar energy systems, and Wi-Fi. FAS supported with awareness, training, and infrastructure investments, strengthening the community and its connection to the forest.
The question guiding the project is: "How can we envision architecture made from the forest, for the forest, that is part of the forest?" The answer comes from two fundamental concepts: the "nest," associated with protection, welcome, tranquility, and family; and the "path," which symbolizes collective experience, trails, and human integration with the environment.
These concepts translated into an in-depth analysis of the place, the people, and the local culture, observing the interaction between vegetation and water in the igapós (flooded forests), the aquatic reflections, the island labyrinths, and the nests of the japiins (Cacicus cela). The oval shape and materiality result from this interpretation, proposing a sensitive and poetic insertion into the environment. Branches covering the structures create natural shade in a region with high temperatures, often exceeding 30°C.
At the end of their useful life, these elements can return to the soil as organic matter, reintegrating into the natural cycle. The project also utilizes wood residues from small-scale forest management, previously without commercial value, transforming them into products that align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 1, 8, 12, and 13): poverty eradication, decent work and economic growth, responsible consumption and production, and climate action.
Thus, the proposed architecture not only shelters, but participates in the ecosystem, reflecting the life that pulses in the forest and reinforcing the human role as an inseparable part of it.

Project implementation: Venezuela
Project development: Venezuela

Given the evident and territorialized human impact on much of our societies, which has generated the global climate emergency, the project explores transitional imaginaries, proposing habitability scenarios that recognize the radical interdependence between species and entities. It articulates spatial practices and climate narratives to propose resilient and restorative futures through mestizo ecosystems in territories degraded by extractivism, primarily mining, in the Venezuelan Orinoco-Amazon region.

Based on the contradictions of our present, the research generates hybrid ecosystems: hybrid spatial and climatic models that combine ancestral forms of inhabitation with speculative design strategies and critical ecology. This concept challenges the fragmentation inherent in extractivism and proposes modes of territorial occupation that promote the coexistence of diverse communities, species, and materials, thus fostering relationships of care and regeneration in degraded landscapes.

In the global context and its various crises, the project highlights the need to understand the cultural dimension of this situation and contribute to overcoming the limitations of imagination in the face of the present and the future, through ecotopias.

Technical sheet:
Maximillian Nowotka.
Gabriel Visconti Stopello.
Michelle Isoldi Campinho (collaborator).
Maria Betina Rincón (collaborator)
Jennifer Carmona (contributor).

Contributions from:
Ana María Durán Calisto, Carlos Segura, EcoCiencia (Environmental Foundation), Emiliano Teran Mantovani (sociologist), Helena Carpio (environmental journalist), Instituto del Bien Común (environmental civil association), Luis Felipe Gottopo (anthropologist), Luisa D'Angelo (biologist), Nelifred Maurera Graterol (geographer), Ricardo Avella (architect), SOSOrinoco (advocacy group), Wataniba (socio-environmental group).

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

In the Serra cluster in Belo Horizonte, the Mais Favela, Menos Lixo program demonstrates that transformations can arise from collective effort. Created in 2022 in response to community demand for improved waste management, the project has been built with the support of residents, students from the UFMG School of Architecture, and local partners such as Projeto Itamar, the Methodist Church, Cerâmica Santana, and Roots Ativa. The initiative combines popular and technical knowledge to address the precarious management of solid waste. The initiative affirms the favela as a powerful territory of invention, autonomy, and leadership.
The initiatives are developed through extension courses that connect students with the local reality. With over 50 projects completed, the areas of action include the creation of street furniture, outreach strategies, debris management, and urban agriculture. One of the most notable solutions is the installation of over 800 custom hooks to hang garbage bags until collection, a measure that protects rivers and forests from pollution and siltation.
The project also renovates areas with vegetable gardens and orchards, promotes composting, and reuses materials. Other interventions include the creation of educational games on construction waste management and the painting of the "Mapão do Serrão," an informative mural at the Professor Edson Pisani Municipal School. Furthermore, to strengthen community relations, ceramics workshops and film screenings are held in locations previously used for dumping garbage and debris.
The project has already expanded beyond the neighborhood, taking its practices and experiences to events in Brazil and abroad, consolidating its position as a benchmark in community self-management and sustainability. With six national and international awards, it has accumulated recognition that reinforces its relevance. Among them, second place in the CAU-MG Good Urban Practices Award. A significant achievement for the community and for Professor Edson Pisani Municipal School, a central partner in the initiative, was its contribution to the school being elected the best in the world by popular vote and one of the top three in the Community Collaboration category by T4 Education. Awards, reports, and academic presentations, from Jornal Nacional to conferences in Mexico, Copenhagen, and Montevideo, increase the visibility of the initiatives and highlight its contributions to the fields of architecture and urbanism and to tackling the waste crisis. Now, the project is arriving at the São Paulo International Architecture Biennial, reaffirming that the city of the future is built on the strength of the communities that inhabit it.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Located on Itapororoca beach in Trancoso, Bahia, the project revives elements characteristic of Brazilian colonial houses, where large eaves and verandas that surround the building provide spaces for transition, shade, and interaction. This spatial logic is also found in Brasília, where government palaces, some of its most important buildings, boast generous roofs that structure the relationship between building and landscape.

The Itapororoca House combines these characteristics in a fast and lightweight construction using 80% dry construction and minimal plant extraction. A 360cm x 360cm orthogonal modulation system defines the "grid" of the glued laminated timber (GLT) pine structural system. This structural modulation, in turn, guides the compartmentalization of the interior spaces. The Itapororoca House proposes a careful integration into a sensitive coastal area, whose occupation is regulated by IPHAN (National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage).

Located on a 3-meter slope and 30 meters from a cliff, the project takes advantage of its topographical features to articulate the house's program in a semi-underground structure, integrating it into the natural profile of the lot. Thus, from the entrance level, the building appears as a single story, while from the seaward side, it reveals two levels.

Both the living areas and bedrooms of the house face the rising sun and the view of the Bahia sea, ensuring adequate sunlight and constant natural ventilation.

Project implementation: India
Project development: India

Rebuilding Flood Resilience: Saraswati Vidyalaya, Kelthan

Saraswati Vidyalaya is a highly affordable rural government school located on the banks of the Tansa River, educating 180 students in grades 8-10 in the tribal village of Kelthan in Palghar, Maharashtra. Suffering from the ravages of nature, the school was partially submerged in the 2019 floods, causing irreparable damage to its infrastructure, making it dangerous for students and teachers to occupy the premises.
The Resilience Rebuilding journey began in 2020, when the architects, together with a local NGO, decided to intervene through a participatory process with the school's teachers and students. The proposal was to build the school in two phases, ensuring regular classes during construction while also facilitating fundraising.
The redesigned school, planned with extreme sensitivity to climate and regional context, incorporates passive solar strategies. Located in the northeast corner of the 1-acre (approximately 4,000 m²) site, the built form helps maximize the school's playing field. The school is elevated on stilts to offer the least possible resistance to floodwaters. The first floor of Phase 1 features three bright, cross-ventilated classrooms with a north-lit roof, along with a staff room, a girls' locker room, and restrooms. These classrooms overlook Mandakini Hill and the lush rice fields, a visual treat for students. The community kitchen is located on the ground floor, serving daily meals to students. The elevated ground floor weaves a multifunctional social space, hosting school activities, community meetings, medical clinics, and awareness campaigns.
A locally sourced material palette helped achieve an incredible construction cost of Rs. 1,200 per square foot (approximately US$13.50 per square foot), ensuring a low carbon footprint. With a concrete structure, the body of this sustainable school is constructed of locally fired red bricks laid in a rat-trap bond (which creates an air chamber within the wall). This reduces the number of bricks while also providing thermal insulation for the classrooms. Brick jalis (trusses) in strategic locations act as visual filters and also ensure breeze flow. The Filler-Slab technique was used on the ground floor, in which locally handcrafted clay discs are inserted into a free-flowing ceiling pattern, reducing the amount of concrete while adding a vernacular aesthetic. Recycled Indian stone flooring, using discarded stones obtained freely from local suppliers, was used to lay the ground floor, in a pattern inspired by the meander of the Tansa River. Puff insulation panels on the roof ensure that classrooms remain thermally comfortable year-round. Roof-mounted solar panels make the school net-zero, self-sufficient in its energy needs. The school's facade, envisioned as a biophilic interface, features green planters as a key design element, maintained by the school's students. The surrounding open space was partially used by the students to grow seasonal vegetables, used in daily meals. The students, along with their farmer parents, contributed to the construction through shramdaan (labor donation), with hands-on training in alternative techniques provided by the architects, bringing skills to the locals.
Saraswati Vidyalaya has now become an example of how rural schools can be reimagined and built sensitively, economically, and yet aesthetically beautiful. Phase 1 generated immense social impact, with increased enrollment, encouraging vulnerable tribal parents to exercise their right to education. An effort to elevate and empower the local, through the local, and with the local.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Since 2013, Arquitetura na Periferia has been providing technical assistance to women in peripheral communities, using a method based on knowledge sharing, cooperation, and empowerment. Recognizing the protagonism of women in their territories, the initiative contributes to ensuring that spatial planning and production are tools for addressing urban inequalities and the effects of the climate crisis, which are increasingly intense in peripheral communities. In 2023, the AnP BIO project emerged with the goal of applying the guiding principles of AnP's technical assistance to the restoration of community spaces, using low-environmental-impact techniques and nature-based solutions.
The project that comprises the exhibition was carried out at the Paulo Freire Occupation Cultural Center in Belo Horizonte. The experience brought together women in a training cycle that combined discussion groups and studies on non-colonial building cultures of Latin American, African, and Indigenous peoples, co-creation workshops, field trips, hands-on workshops, and community outreach. The group collectively designed the necessary improvements and implemented interventions using earth, bamboo, and recycled materials. Highlights of the transformations include: plastering and painting the facade with earth, earthen flooring in the living rooms, bamboo ceilings, a rammed earth bench in the outdoor living area, the reuse of ceramic tiles for the bathroom, and the construction of a green roof. The participants also incorporated Adinkras into the walls, reviving these symbols, originating from West Africa, as a gesture of identity affirmation and resistance.
More than just physically restoring the space, the experience redefined the territory and expanded the collective imagination about what it means to build from nature and available resources. By giving women back the power to create their own spaces, the project creates a network of knowledge transmission that extends beyond the construction site, influencing daily practices and possible futures for the community.
Architecture built with natural materials and ancient techniques in peripheral urban areas poses significant challenges. Confronting the stigma that associates land use with precariousness and adapting these practices to dense areas with small lots and pre-existing buildings requires inventiveness. The method proposed by AnP BIO, open and developed in collaboration with residents, allows these limitations to be transformed into creativity and collective experimentation, revealing the transformative nature of the practice.
By connecting architecture and political ecology, experience shows that transforming space is also an act of resistance and affirmation of rights. The renovation of the Paulo Freire Cultural Center made the space more welcoming and resilient and, above all, pointed to ways to address the climate emergency through self-management, care, and the collective strength of women.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Conexão Água is a short documentary that begins with the invisible presence of the Água Preta stream, buried under layers of concrete in São Paulo, to reveal how water insists on creating connections—territorial, environmental, and human—even in contexts of erasure. The film weaves through various scenes in which water takes center stage: the spring that endures and feeds a community pond; a class held in an alley, where students encounter a river running hidden beneath their feet; and the daily reality of homeless people who, deprived of shelter, are also deprived of a tap.

Between São Paulo and Buenos Aires, between scarcity and abundance, the documentary reveals how water exposes inequalities but also opens up possibilities for encounter, care, and collective imagination. The camera follows the artistic and environmental experiences of the collective (se)cura humana, which has been active in São Paulo since 2015 with performances, installations, and urban interventions focused on the visibility of buried water, the creation of community spaces, and the demand for the right to the city and nature. Works such as Lago da Travessa, Torneira da Travessa, and Parque Aquático Móvel are featured in Ocupação (se)cura, a living territory on Travessa Roque Adóglio in the Vila Anglo Brasileira neighborhood, where the film gains much of its poetic and political power.

Conexão Água proposes a critical fable: what if we recognized rivers and waters as subjects of rights, capable of reorganizing collective life and urban design? In this sense, the short film documents community practices and serves as a gesture of art activism, blurring the lines between cinema, performance, urbanism, and environmental pedagogy.

Authors
Flavio Barollo is a video artist, performer, and co-founder of the collective (se)cura humana. His filmography includes the works Utopian Cities in an Ancestral Future (2025); Water Connection (2024), selected at the Suncine Barcelona Festival; PARELHA – A Look at Reality (2024); Deserto SP (2023); I'm Going to Tell a Story I Don't Even Know How to Start (2021); Freedom Freedom (2021); It's All a Fight and Poetry Rules (2020); My Body, My Border (2020); Brick Brazil (2015); (se)cura humana, the film (2015); Loberia (2015); Véio (2010), winner of the Popular Jury at the Cascavel Festival; and Blood for the Children (2009).

Wellington Tibério is a musician, educator, geographer, and co-founder of the collective (se)cura humana. A doctoral candidate at FFLCH-USP, he works as a teacher in schools and community projects, integrating teaching practices, art, and urban ecology. At (se)cura humana, he develops performance-based classes in water-filled territories, integrating scientific knowledge, local wisdom, and artistic and activist experience. He is the author of the essay "WATER AND URBANISM: ARTISTIC ACTIONS FOR AN (IM)POSSIBLE CITY," published in the Redobra journal of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA).

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Located on the coast of São Paulo, the project was commissioned by a client who runs a small shipyard in the region, dedicated to renovating wooden fishing boats. The project required a ventilated roof capable of housing retired surfboards and canoes, landscaping tools, and, occasionally, serving as a support space for informal gatherings and meetings.

The design is based on technical expertise and local labor, which is responsible not only for assembling the roof but also for designing and executing the wooden parts themselves. Much of the material used comes from the shipyard's own reclaimed wood stock, with particular emphasis on elements that already bear the marks of previous cuts, time, and sea air.

The structure consists of lattice-framed frames made of sawn timber, assembled using techniques similar to those used on ship hulls. These frames rest on concrete footings, which emerge from the ground at some points to ensure the structure's stability. The lattices extend to support galvanized metal tiles, spaced evenly to allow natural light and promote cross-ventilation, while also ensuring protection from rain.

The pieces are finished with pigmented natural oil, applied in thin layers with a cloth and brush, an artisanal method that helps preserve the wood in humid and saline environments, without creating impermeable barriers or compromising the interpretation of its original texture.

The implementation respects the existing terrain, reorganizing its use without altering its character. The project is a direct extension of the contractor's and his family's work routine, integrating knowledge of naval carpentry with the field of architecture. By establishing this bridge, the construction reveals the power of simple, well-executed solutions, rooted in local know-how and the specificities of the territory in which it is located.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Terra Nostra farm project included the location of the main house, as well as support buildings for a small cheese production operation, in a mountainous terrain. At 1,530 meters above sea level, next to Serra da Bocaina National Park, the horizon is vast.

The Paraitinga River runs along the edge of the land, still crystal clear, just after its source. This river flows toward São Paulo and soon joins the Paraibuna, where it then becomes the Paraíba do Sul. It turns out that in the town of Guararema, this river reverses course and turns north, a sort of return journey: the Paraíba Valley, which separates the Bocaina and Mantiqueira mountain ranges and flows toward Rio de Janeiro.

From this terrain, you can see the entire geography, the entire valley, and, in the distance, the next mountain, the Mantiqueira. Given this vastness, we decided to focus on a specific landscape, where we believe it makes sense to build a house. Amidst the sloping grassland, there's a single tree, growing on a rock, which defines the house's design.

The idea was to create a lightweight structure, gently elevated above the ground, allowing the terrain to maintain its natural course and preserving a continuous reading of the valley. Constructed of glued laminated timber (GLT), the structure connects to the terrain via a narrow walkway, positioned precisely next to the tree and its rock. The material presence of the tree and the rock introduces a human scale to the immensity of the landscape. It is through this contrast that the place takes shape.

The structure's arched geometry references this striking feature of the landscape and the natural contours of the terrain. It also serves as a clever way to withstand the horizontal forces of high-altitude winds while minimizing the use of wood and metal bracing. The landscape shapes the project, and its form is its structure.

Less wood also means less material to be moved to the difficult-to-access terrain: the entire structure was produced in a controlled factory environment in collaboration with João Pini and the team at ITA Engenharia em Madeira, who were responsible for the structural design, fabrication and subsequent assembly on site by a team of specialized carpenters.

We sought to capture the essence of the site, while simultaneously introducing a high-tech wooden engineering project into the rural landscape. Seen from a distance, it qualifies as a work that tests the spatial and constructive potential of prefabricated wooden structures. Seen up close, the house is anchored to an existing rock with minimal disturbance to the site and recognizes its language in the local architecture of ceramic tile and wood huts.

Project development: Türkiye

The title "Design for Disaster" is borrowed from a video about the Los Angeles fires. As early as the 1960s, wildfires shaped the city—then seen as exceptions. Today, the scenario repeats itself with alarming regularity. Disaster no longer appears as an interruption, but as a cyclical pattern inscribed in urban life. "Design for Disaster" addresses this dual horizon: the history of catastrophe and reconstruction on the one hand, and the question of architecture in a permanent state of emergency on the other.

The 2020 and 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and Syria revealed a paradox. Millions lost their homes—yet it wasn't until three years later that aluminum shelters appeared on a large scale. At the same time, high-rise districts sprang up at record speed—not for survivors, but as speculative real estate projects. Disaster thus becomes a driver of capital.

The 1:20 model presented at the Biennale reflects this contradiction. Lightweight, fire- and earthquake-resistant, these houses promise quick solutions, but in practice they remain belated, temporary, and precarious. Paul Virilio called this the politics of accident: "With every invention, we also invent its accident." The shelter is both a space of protection and a symbol of fragility—a structure haunted by the very catastrophe it seeks to resist.

Virilio's insight resonates with Giorgio Agamben's thesis that the state of exception has become the rule. In Turkey, this is evident in the late displacement: shelters are provided only when provisionality itself becomes permanent. Peter Sloterdijk's cultural philosophy of emergency describes societies as vulnerable immune systems. Architecture becomes an immune apparatus—but immunity is unevenly distributed: towers emerge, survivors remain in camps. Martina Löw's relational theory of space emphasizes that space is never neutral, but socially produced. These houses are not neutral shelters, but crystallizations of geographies of crisis.

From Anatolia to Los Angeles, the pattern repeats itself: accelerated reconstruction here, delayed relief there. Disaster is no longer exceptional, but—as Virilio wrote—the hidden face of progress.

"Design for Disaster" stages this ambivalence. The skeletal model is not a solution, but a question: can resilience be designed—or are we merely building monuments to the accident?

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil, Switzerland

Mãe Luiza occupies a unique place in the city of Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte, due to its geographic location and the political and social position its community occupies. A densely populated neighborhood created through a process of self-construction, it is mostly made up of brick houses, organized according to a well-defined urban structure: a north-south axis forms the backbone of the neighborhood along João XXIII and Sabino Gentili streets; side streets intersect the main axis and meet with a parallel road system, organized by Guanabara and Camaragibe streets. At the end of this street are the Mãe Luiza Lighthouse and the Arena do Morro multi-sport gymnasium, opened in 2014.

The building symbolizes the realization of a development project developed by the community throughout its history of social inclusion and improvement of its spatial conditions. It was structured in the 1980s with the arrival of Italian priest Sabino Gentili, who founded the Centro Socio-Pastoral Nossa Senhora da Conceição [CSPSNC], a philanthropic civil entity and a forum for community discussion to respond to the many challenges they faced. A network of supporters formed around the CSPSNC, developing educational and assistance activities for young people and the elderly.

Architecturally, it is an emblematic building. Composed of few elements, it is configured as an immense white roof, supported by porticos resting on the single paved floor. A third element completes the ensemble: a sinuous envelope that unfolds between the others, mediating not only between them but also between the interior and exterior. The hollow concrete elements that comprise it, more than a constructive element, represent its identity; they configure the project's internal and external enclosures, and can be considered the most complete application of the Herzogdemeuronian way of working.

Herzog & de Meuron's first project in Brazil, it incorporates two fundamental concepts into the firm's production: material experimentation through testing with models and prototypes as part of project development, and the transformation of traditional construction elements through operations that, in addition to altering their physical appearance, their form of use and application, introduce new production methods.

Over the years, it has become a community center that extends beyond educational and sports activities, hosting the neighborhood's main collective, cultural, and social events, and serving as a space for debate and celebration. The political dimension of Mãe Luiza's existence and trajectory is notable in its community-based practice of participation and grassroots management. The reach and expansion of its actions point to a possible path for other communities and represents a new paradigm not only for architectural work in areas of urban, social, and environmental vulnerability, but also for forms of shared management, promoting equality, inclusion, and more just and inclusive forms of urban development.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

In 2014, MASP's new board of directors began a series of renovations aimed at adapting the facilities to the increased number of visitors and restoring the fundamental architectural principles of the main building. One of the main challenges was adapting the building to fire safety standards while respecting its materiality and historical value.

The adopted solution ensures an escape route protected against fire and smoke for up to 120 minutes, meeting the Fire Department's requirements. The project included compartmentalizing the stairwell between the ground floor and the second floor using a system of fire-resistant steel and glass frames; separating the first and second floors with a vertical flap to prevent the spread of smoke and flames; reversing the air conditioning system to function as a smoke exhaust system; and opening tilt-and-turn windows on both main facades to allow outside air to enter.

The restoration of the concrete structure of the external porticos and the roof slab of the open span deepened the discussion on the restoration of the exposed concrete in the main building, which had previously begun with the intervention on the facades to install the tilting modules. All of these interventions were based on the premise of preserving the original characteristics of the historic concrete—texture, color, and formwork—and were preceded by tests that validated the adopted solutions. In the case of the porticos, laboratory tests were also conducted to evaluate the durability and level of protection afforded to the concrete structure by the application of paint.

The architectural design for the renovation and expansion of the new building, along with its underground connection to the MASP headquarters, proposed the partial demolition of the existing structure and the construction of a new one beneath Avenida Paulista, allowing for the full functional integration of both the technical and public areas. The construction increased the museum's area by over 7,000 m², with additional gallery floors, classrooms, a technical reserve, a restoration laboratory, a restaurant, a shop, and event areas, expanding the current activities and the museum's capacity to accommodate visitors.

The building is a regular rectangular prism with a transparent ground floor, accessible to the public. A perforated metal skin unifies the facades and allows for the lighting and temperature control required for the exhibition of works of art. The air conditioning, lighting, and security systems employ the most advanced technologies available for museums. The materials used—exposed concrete, steel, glass, and stone—and the industrialized systems allow for the configuration of spaces suited to contemporary museum standards and reference the characteristics of MASP, ensuring the integration of the complex.

Visitors can access the museum via Rua Professor Otávio Mendes—where the ticket office and museum shop are located—or Avenida Paulista, where the public can access the services of a restaurant/café. The first floor features a multifunctional area for exhibitions and events, and a terrace overlooking the Lina Bo Bardi Building. The exhibition spaces occupy five floors with 5-meter ceilings. These flexible areas can be adapted to each exhibition project.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The School on Morro da Providência is the name given to the school located on Brazil's first informal housing hill. It emerged as an expansion of Casa Amarela, an important educational center and local community agency. The project is based on the relationship between two spaces: the School and the Workshop-School. The first aims to expand the existing educational and cultural activities at Casa Amarela, with pedagogy and practices that recognize Afro-Brazilian culture. The second allows for constructive experimentation through the production of BTC (compacted earth blocks), enabling greater thermal insulation, including the assistance of residents in this production, as well as a fundamental reconnection with the land, after years of extraction from the local quarry that destroyed much of the hill.

The 400m2 building is spread over four levels for multiple educational activities. Access to the lower ground floor is a multipurpose room for activities such as Afro dance and capoeira. On the ground floor, a controlled, publicly accessible square opens onto the street while connecting to the building, providing access to the educators' and kekerês' (Yoruba, children aged 3 to 7) rooms. The design prioritized service areas at the ends, while the rooms, divided by the center of the space, can be expanded, allowing for flexible group meetings. On the second level, the erês (Yoruba, children aged 8 to 13) and somodês (Yoruba, young people aged 14 to 21) share the same room, sharing space with the room for independent women of the provision (MIP – a group of women participating in the technical course offered by the school). All spaces are flexible and have bathrooms and storage for donated materials, connected by a balcony on all levels. Vertical access is via a circular staircase that bridges the square, the living rooms, and the terrace, offering views of the city. The concrete structure was constructed based on similarity with the surrounding practices, employing local workers and allowing resources to be invested in the Morro residents themselves. The earth block walls, however, were chosen to practice a different construction practice—still unknown in the surrounding area—but one that has an impact due to the possibility of introducing a less extractive and polluting construction method. This experimentation enabled the incorporation of drawings into some of the modules, allowing for a new dimension to the architecture through narratives that evoke the symbolism of local plants and medicinal herbs through impressions in the earth.

Architecture, through an accessible construction system that allows for self-construction, the local circular economy, and the autonomy of builders and residents, emerges to reestablish a relationship with the hill, the favela, and its residents by uniting the collective territory of the school with the plasticity of the land.

Project implementation: Spain
Project development: Spain

Faced with advancing climate change, coastal communities face a crossroads: proactively protecting the coastline has become essential to safeguard lives, heritage, and ecosystems. Traditional solutions, such as dikes or breakwaters, while effective, entail significant environmental and social impacts, restricting community uses and altering the landscape. It is therefore necessary to explore more sustainable and integrated alternatives.

It is in this context that LIFE COSTAdapta emerges in the Canary Islands, a region deeply connected to the sea. The project proposes gentle and progressive solutions, less aggressive than rigid defenses, reinforcing natural coastal self-protection mechanisms. Inspired by medical immunotherapy, the project advocates a "coastal immunotherapy": working with nature and enhancing its resilience.

The central proposal is the creation of artificial tidal ponds, ecological concrete reefs with adaptive geometries, which function as a barrier against sea level rise and as a social space. They reduce wave energy, limit erosion, and provide habitat for marine species. With varying depths, they allow for swimming, environmental education, and scientific research.

The multidisciplinary team plans to build a full-scale prototype on the north coast of Gran Canaria, in San Felipe, where homes are at risk due to rising seas. The process included environmental analyses, landscape studies, and citizen participation, involving residents and surfers to ensure that the project respects local customs and wave dynamics.

The project also highlights the cultural role of tidal ponds, historically present as fishing grounds, salt flats, and recreational spaces. Today, they are symbols of collective identity and demonstrate how small interventions can coexist in harmony with nature. By reinterpreting them, LIFE COSTAdapta expands the role of architecture to environmental and social activism.

In short, the project seeks to prove that gentle interventions can be effective and sustainable, creating a hybrid ecosystem that is simultaneously a barrier, habitat, landscape, and community space. Thus, it contributes to a resilient coastline, prepared to face the effects of the climate crisis.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Rio Mar Archipelagos study environmental changes in the Amazon River Basin in Brazil, focusing on documenting and analyzing river archipelagos threatened with extinction due to climate change. The research seeks to understand the dynamics of these islands, examining their specific processes and conditions as fluid elements within the tropical forest. The work organizes a graphic narrative divided into three scales of analysis, recording their transformations from the regional to the local level, based on two extreme case studies. These studies highlight the complex relationship between human settlements and the landscapes of the Amazon River, which are essential sources of food, transportation, and subsistence.

The first approach proposes a "territorial scale" analysis, locating the archipelagos within the Amazonian landscape as a whole through maps, reports, and news reports. The second offers a "local scale" analysis, addressing two case studies: the Anavilhanas Archipelago, threatened by drought, and the Marajó Archipelago, at risk of flooding due to rising sea levels, through approximate mapping and fieldwork. Finally, the third approach presents the "empirical scale," revealing the adaptations developed by local communities and documenting the physical signs of climate change through analytical drawings, images, and interviews.

The result is an atlas of transformation, creating visual records and representations that highlight the interdependence between communities and local landscapes—and how their sociopolitical dimensions will be affected by climate change. In this way, these scenarios introduce a reflection on the urgency of conserving and adapting social structures rooted in these territories, bringing to light notions of climate justice, preservation, and ecological transition, and understanding these remaining elements in the landscape as vestiges of a new extreme socioclimatic condition.

This work was made possible through funding from a Penny White Research Fund fellowship from the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Project implementation: Argentina
Project development: Argentina

MEMORY
"Every operation must be subordinated to the purpose of reintegrating and preserving the expressive value of the work, since the attempt to achieve this is the liberation of its true form. Restoration as a critical process and restoration as a creative act are, therefore, united by a dialectical relationship, in which the former defines the conditions that the latter must adopt as its own intimate premises, and where the critical action realizes the architectural understanding, which the creative action is called upon to pursue and integrate."
* Architectural restoration. R. Bonelli (1963)

The building dates back to 1920 and 1921 and represents a clear example of the industrial architecture of the period and the region's economic and productive development model. It is located in the port area of the city of Santa Fe, Argentina, an area currently experiencing the greatest growth and development in the city, due to the obsolescence of the railway and port infrastructure.

The renovation project is based on the conception of the old mill as a space in which interventions are made in a balanced way, enhancing the original building and accommodating the new programmatic uses intended for the academic activities of the schools that make up the Municipal High School.

Taking on the hallmark that defines the building's structural metrics, the intervention is conceived as a succession of flexible spaces that overlap and advance over the central nave, according to the needs of each area, generating trays with double, triple and quadruple heights, which enhance the existing spatiality while maintaining the matrix of the original typology.

The intervention involves the recovery of the masonry of the envelope, the restoration of the external enclosures and the original metal structure, assuming the marks inherited from the past, highlighting the relationship between the old and the new and evidencing both the material and immaterial value of things.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Bordered by the public balcony of the Copan Building — a suspended sidewalk in the Historic Center of São Paulo —, the project for the New Greenpeace Brazil Headquarters presents itself as a showcase for the institution in the largest city in Latin America.

The move to downtown São Paulo—in a historic and symbolic building—reflects the organization's sustainable approach. The new address takes advantage of the city center's abundant urban infrastructure, linked to urban mobility and service accessibility. Such initiatives contribute to resource conservation and better use of the time and energy of those involved in the Greenpeace ecosystem.

Its privileged location combines with the architecture to invite the city's inhabitants to enjoy a widely accessible space, featuring unique materials and unparalleled cultural relevance. Inviting furnishings allow for ample use of the veranda, which extends as a continuation of the sidewalk. From there, the program is graduated in privacy: from the Warehouse to the Multipurpose and Joker rooms, all the way to the Collective Office. Its access and operation are independent of the rest of the program, and it can be opened to the public whenever necessary.

The spacious spaces, permeated by movable dividers—such as curtains and sliding doors—allow for multiple uses through easy reconfiguration. This flexibility allows for adaptation to previously unforeseen uses, thereby extending the space's lifespan. Organizing flows around a central infrastructure axis provides greater freedom of appropriation, facilitating flexible integration between workspaces and reducing conflicts caused by simultaneous, divergent activities.

The space emphasizes the architectural history of the site. During construction, an imposing skylight, previously hidden by the ceiling and covered by concrete, was revealed. Niemeyer's original drawings confirmed his vision, intended to illuminate the deepest part of the space, devoid of windows. Its reopening flooded the office with natural light and guided the arrangement of the communal desks. Thus, the historical appreciation harmonizes with current demands, highlighting a consciously silent architecture, focused on infrastructural interventions that ensure robustness for a long-lasting and environmentally responsible occupation.

The project was conceived by two partner firms. Guaja.cc is an interdisciplinary creative studio, born from one of Brazil's first coworking spaces, with over a decade of experience in the design, implementation, branding, and management of corporate, cultural, and food and beverage spaces. Facury is a multidisciplinary firm that operates in two autonomous and complementary areas: architecture and process management. By combining these expertise, it develops projects that align sensitivity and technical rigor, attentive to the realities of the construction site and client demands.

Project implementation: Austria
Project development: Austria

"The atmosphere of Freie Mitte, with its extraordinary relationships between people, animals, and plants, resembled what happens in a forest, where respect and freedom are in a delicate balance, and where people greet each other as they pass by, even if they don't know them."

2012-2025
Over the past 20 years, the process of natural succession has gradually transformed the 30 hectares of vacant land of the former Nordbahnhof freight station into a seductive post-industrial landscape, an urban wilderness with fascinating flora and fauna, right in the city center. Over time, people have fallen in love with this fantastic "otherness," appropriating it as their unofficial public space—a wonderful gap in the city.

In 2012, the city launched an international competition to fill this gap with half a million square meters of new buildings, primarily housing. Our winning proposal "discovers" Freie Mitte, pushing all built mass to the area's perimeter, protecting the wilderness, allowing it to continue to grow, and revitalizing what already exists: a challenging public habitat with ample opportunities for people, animals, and plants.

In the years following the competition, Freie Mitte served as a projective public space for intermediate uses, a raw testing ground for new forms of public culture. The "Nordbahnhalle," a former industrial warehouse, became a sociocultural center hosting local and international exhibitions, workshops, workplaces, and diverse programs for residents and visitors. In parallel, a large team of developers, city officials, architects, landscape architects, and ecologists worked on the design of the buildings surrounding Freie Mitte and in Freie Mitte itself.

In 2021, city politicians ceremonially inaugurated the first part of Freie Mitte. After 20 years of experimenting with existing resources, Freie Mitte allows for the surprising return of public space as a genuine promise, as originally envisioned by the neighborhood's pioneers. For the first time in Vienna, a space like Freie Mitte—with its transhuman ecology, its wild appearance, and its provocative scale—is recognized as an acceptable, even desirable, urban public space.

Ahead of its time, the original idea for Freie Mitte proved to meet the requirements of climate-resilient urban design, promoting the right to otherness in the city. The harsh realities of our time transform Freie Mitte's otherness into a potential value, a possible response to a profound crisis. The fact that striving for a more humble way of interacting with nature—even on a much larger scale—is still an exception demonstrates the need for ambitious and visionary projects that pave the way for the development of our future neighborhoods and urban environments.

Urban Development Plan »Free Middle, Vielseitiger Rand«
Urban Planning: StudioVlayStreeruwitz, Vienna
Landscape Architecture: Agence Ter, Paris/Karlsruhe
Traffic Planning: Traffix, Vienna
Client: City of Vienna, ÖBB-Immobilien (Real Estate Agency of the Austrian Railways)

Landscape Design/Implementation of Freie Mitte
Agence Ter in partnership with Land in Sicht

Research Projects »Mischung: Possible!« and »Mischung: Nordbahnhof«
Funded by Klima+Energiefonds Österreich, in cooperation with TU Wien, Institut für Wohnbau (Christian Peer, Peter Fattinger) / Institut für Soziologie (Silvia Forlati), DI Andrea Mann, StudioVlayStreeruwitz, Architekturzentrum Wien, morgenjungs, Erste gemeinnützige Wohnungsgesellschaft

Photograph of Freie Mitte
Davide Curatola Soprana

Magic Drawings
Marta de las Heras Martinez

Magazine Graphic Design
Beton.studio

Thanks to everyone who provided us with valuable information, sources and material, especially: Thomas Proksch, land in sicht, Agence Ter, Peter Rippl, Martin Riesing, Mara Reinsberger, Mirjam Mieschendahl, Angelika Fitz / AzW, Alexandra Madreiter / MA 21, IG Lebenswerter Nordbahnhof, GB*Stadtteilmanagment Nordbahnhof, Nordbahnhofviertel Service, Team Nordbahnhalle and all the people who are part of Freie Mitte.

Project implementation: Mexico
Project development: Mexico

Within the Anáhuac Mayab University Campus, as part of the educational and technological growth and updating, the Innovation Laboratory and the expansion of the classroom building of the School of Architecture and Design were created.

These spaces are created as an extension of the Engineering and Design Division, integrating with existing classrooms, which will become more open and dynamic rooms.

The extension of the Innovation Laboratory is planned parallel to the existing building, generating a new facade that continues the existing route marked by the walkways of the campus buildings.

The expansion project follows this same principle of correctly oriented linear buildings, which seek to capture uniform light from the north and block and protect against sunlight from the south.

A large space generates and articulates this extension. The extension is this new, open, and spacious space. A space where common activities and study are carried out freely. A system of co-work, co-study, and co-learn, where the space flows freely, activities intertwine, and actions within the space are suggested. These are actions within the space that can be planned, but can also be proposed, or allow others to produce diverse activities and even different exhibitions, events, and celebrations. A dynamic, innovative space.

This large space is structured through the management of light. A series of prefabricated pieces allow light to pass through and create a scale and ascending rhythmic treatment. It assumes the scale of the existing building and unfolds toward the access garden. This is a gesture of continuity with the existing buildings on the Campus, all of which are allusions to pre-Columbian architecture.

The School of Architecture Expansion is designed over the existing two-story building, creating a third floor for open-plan workshops and creating a new envelope for the entire existing building. It generates and articulates the entire envelope, culminating in a large truss sloping westward. It is a space where communal and study activities can take place freely, where the space flows, allowing for diverse activities.

Currently, the concept of classrooms has changed, and even more so in terms of design teaching, with greater participation and interaction between students, teachers and consultants.

The large space is structured through inclined consoles crossed by sunshades that allow light to pass through and block the sun. It redefines the scale of the existing building and envelops it, creating an open, free, and flexible third floor. A continuous space with multiple uses, from drawing workshops to exhibition spaces.

The formal treatment is a response to the language that has been generated for 40 years in the Campus buildings.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Nova Eldorado is located in a unique area, located in a wetland area between the Lower Jacuí and Lake Guaíba basins, at the transition point between the Pampa and Atlantic Forest biomes. The flat terrain, historically cultivated for rice farming, requires intelligent solutions for drainage and stormwater management. In this context, water management becomes a structuring element, guiding development and occupation guidelines.

More than an urban development, this is a planned neighborhood focused on sustainability, quality of life, and integration between city and nature. Through nature-based solutions, infrastructure, communities, and natural cycles are connected in a way that enhances the local ecosystem and enhances its resilience.

The urban design project, developed by Area Urbanismo, and the urban drainage solutions, designed by Geasa Engenharia, translate this vision into an integrated plan, in which the landscaping and urban design project, designed by PLANTAR, plays a central role: it organizes public spaces, weaves together green areas and ecological corridors, makes water the protagonist and creates environments that encourage active mobility, collective use and coexistence.

The large central park, located on the banks of the buffer lakes in the heart of the neighborhood, combines environmental function with appreciation of the natural landscape, becoming a structuring hub for flows, activities, and encounters. With programs that enliven daily life—fairs, community events, sports facilities, and community areas—the park has established itself as a meeting point and urban pulse of Nova Eldorado, promoting well-being, social interaction, and contact with nature.

The villas, arranged perpendicular to the park, create smooth transitions in the landscape, accommodate specific uses, and reinforce the urban presence. Their color palettes, inspired by local flora, and urban furniture contribute to creating emotional landmarks, strengthening the bond between residents and the land.

An ABC & Embralot project, Nova Eldorado features landscaping and urban design by PLANTAR, a studio specializing in designing and enhancing territories, working at the intersection of landscape, urban planning, architecture, and design. Founded in 2016 by architects Luciana Pitombo and Felipe Stracci, PLANTAR combines sensitive perception, multidisciplinary vision, and technical rigor to connect stakeholders, systems, and knowledge, proposing solutions that strengthen relationships, enhance spaces, and transform realities.

With expertise across multiple scales—from furniture and gardens to neighborhoods, parks, and complex urban areas—the studio offers full-service delivery for outdoor spaces, including feasibility studies, business plans, and operational management, with end-to-end expertise, from consulting and structuring to implementation and operation.

Its purpose is to create places that connect people to nature, others, and themselves, generating social, environmental, economic, and cultural value. Across Brazil, PLANTAR has structured more than 60 concession and PPP projects for parks and public-use assets, as well as private ventures across various typologies and segments, always focusing on sustainability, innovation, and the connection between nature and urbanity.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Coming soon.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Inhabiting the Landscape – A modular system for low-impact construction in remote environments

Context and Concept
Cabana Zero is the prototype of a series of 11 shelters designed for a spiritual retreat inspired by the indigenous traditions of the Peruvian Amazon. The proposal seeks simplicity, low impact, and a direct connection between the built space and nature. Located in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro, it combines a compact interior space and a dry bathroom, both clad in natural wood, intended for individual seclusion. In contrast, the darkened wooden veranda frames the landscape and intensifies the immersion in the forest.

Design and Construction
The structure rests on six 10x10 cm wooden pillars, echoing the slenderness of the neighboring trunks. Longitudinal and transverse beams, spaced every 1.20 m, define the 2.40 m cubic module of the interior space. A significant portion of the wood was reused from a pre-existing building on the site, reducing environmental impact and connecting the project to the local history. The enclosure features PET fiber insulation, and a secondary roof creates an air layer that reduces the thermal load. Elevated off the ground, the structure uses bolted metal connections and concrete footings, facilitating assembly and disassembly, and minimal disturbance to the site.

Autonomy and Ecology
The cabin operates off-grid: it has no electricity; waste is treated by composting toilets, and graywater is treated by banana tree circles, enriching the soil. The absence of mirrors and glass reinforces the contemplative approach and the disconnection sought during the retreat.

System and Impact
As the first example of a replicable system, the project was designed for hard-to-reach areas, allowing transportation and assembly by small teams without heavy machinery. This approach enabled the construction of 11 additional units in more difficult-to-access areas on the same site, validating the system's adaptability to different logistical and geographic conditions.