On Sunday, September 28, 2025, Parque da Jóia, located in the Butantã neighborhood of São Paulo, will host the 4th Festival da Jóia, an event celebrating socio-environmental regeneration, community culture, and environmental education. This year, the festival officially integrates the program of the 14th São Paulo International Architecture Biennial, directly engaging with its central themes: preserving forests and reforesting cities, and coexisting with water.

Organized by the Gente Jóia collective, made up of local residents and collaborators, the event reaffirms the community's leading role in the transformation of Parque da Jóia — a 13,000 m² space that, in the past, housed the former Jóia Favela and which, today, is a reference in urban reforestation, sustainable water management and permaculture practices.

The program includes two openings: the first is the Biomimetic Design Exhibition, which will present to the public prototypes developed by FAU-USP students based on solutions inspired by nature. 

The second debut is the "Jewel of the Park" Route Game. Aimed at both regular visitors and school groups, it offers the public a playful and educational journey to learn about the history, regenerative initiatives, and biodiversity of the Jewel Park. This interactive experience invites the public to take on the role of regeneration detectives to unravel an ecological mystery. The goal of the route game is to raise environmental awareness by exploring the journey from destruction to restoration, demonstrating how community unity can transform degraded areas into beautiful, biodiverse places.

The festival will also feature three musical acts featuring community artists, a capoeira circle, and hands-on urban permaculture workshops, where the public will have the opportunity to see up close and understand how rain gardens work and compost the waste produced throughout the festival day. All activities are open to the public and free of charge. 

Throughout the day, the Jóia Agroecological Fair will take place, featuring healthy food, handicrafts from local producers, and careful solid waste management, all geared toward a zero-waste festival. There will also be graffiti work in the park, with the Butantãnicas collective, made up of visual artists from Butantã who participate in graffiti campaigns throughout the neighborhood, coloring the walls and highlighting the work produced by women.

"The Jewelry Festival is more than an event; it's a celebration of a living, collectively constructed territory. By integrating it with the Biennial, we reinforce that Jewelry Park is also a space for reflection on the future of cities and inspiration for regenerative practices, contributing not only to the environment but also to the physical and mental health of the population," emphasizes the Gente Jóia collective.

The 4th Jewelry Festival is supported by the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism and the Department of Pathology of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo, the International Architecture Biennial of São Paulo and also with the support of the Urban Permaculturists network.

Free entry

More information: iInstagram.com/parquedajoia

The 4th Jewel Festival reaffirms Jewel Park as a living laboratory of sustainable practices and community strengthening, aligning art, design, permaculture and environmental education in a space that strives for recognition as a municipal urban park.

Ateliescola Acaia is a socio-educational project in Vila Leopoldina that offers 250 children and young people, primarily from low-income communities surrounding CEAGESP, free full-time education, healthcare, and citizenship training. Students can attend from preschool to pre-technical level, benefiting from an environment that combines theory and practice and values creativity and autonomy.

Every day, around 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., families briefly converge at the gate of Ateliescola Acaia—a place marked by joy and care, but also by asphalt, parked cars, and heat. In recent years, São Paulo has faced intense heat waves, disproportionately impacting low-income communities with limited access to adaptive infrastructure. The children at Acaia live and navigate these "extremes" daily.

Responding to the pressing issue of extreme heat in urban São Paulo, the project brings together students, parents, and educators to design and build a temporary prototype structure on the threshold of the Ateliescola Acaia. It directly engages the lived experience of those most affected—children and caregivers—to redefine and transform the school's entrance area into a shared, shaded, and welcoming gathering space.

This collaborative intervention draws on vernacular knowledge and tactical urbanism, exploring the connections between climate justice, urban transformation, and intergenerational learning. The resulting framework will test site-specific solutions through low-tech strategies, but will also serve as a platform for community storytelling.

It's there on Acaia Street is a project started by carpenter Alice Barkhausen (DE), designer and cultural producer Sofia Costa Pinto (BR), architect and builder Maddalena Pornaro (IT) and urban researcher and educator Licia Soldavini

Schedule

From September 8th to 18th, from 9am to 4pm – Drawing and construction workshop (only for Ateliescola Acaia students)

September 19, 4pm to 7pm – Opening at the Acaia Institute with music, conversation and food (open to all)

4pm – Music with Culture on the Sidewalk by: Hilton Hits  

5:00 PM – Presentation of results and group conversation with Zoy Anastassakis (ESDI/UERJ)

6pm – Food and drinks

Acaia Institute, Dr. Avelino Chaves St., 159 – Vila Leopoldina, São Paulo – SP, 05318-040

The Guarani Mbyá community preserves its spirituality and language on Brazil's smallest indigenous land, surrounded by the megalopolis of São Paulo. In 1500, during the Portuguese invasion, the Guarani inhabited vast territories from the Brazilian coast to Paraguay. Their prosperous villages thrived on agriculture and livestock. Over the centuries, they were displaced, enslaved, and catechized, contributing to São Paulo's rise as a commercial center. Today, this community represents a microcosm of the global climate crisis. Amid 22 million people, they protect one of the last remaining tropical forests in the region, including the 400-hectare Jaraguá Peak. Despite being restricted to just 1.8 hectares of recognized territory, they maintain ancestral agricultural practices and protect biodiversity, resisting environmental degradation. By comparison, indigenous lands in Brazil lost only 1% of native vegetation in 30 years, compared to 20.6% on private lands. 

At the heart of their spiritual practice is the Petynguá pipe, made from the endangered araucaria tree, connecting past, present, and future. This sacred smoke, rising from the intersection of forest and urban sprawl, symbolizes their unbroken ancestry and a call to rethink the environmental impact of urban life. 

Nhemboaty is the result of five years of meetings between photographer Rafael Vilela and the residents of the Jaraguá Indigenous Territory. The exhibition takes place within the Pindomirim Village, an immersive experience in Nhanderekó, the Guarani way of life. For an afternoon, visitors will be able to sample the traditional food of this people, walk through the territory, listen to their words and songs, and visit sacred and exhibition spaces. The event, held in partnership with the São Paulo Architecture Biennial and the Autonomous Agency, will also feature a short film screening from the Imagining the Forest project, with films by Nadeem Alkarimi, Qadir Jhatial, and Sadqain Riaz (Karachi Biennial, Pakistan), and Eelyn Lee (Richmond Arts & Ideas Festival, UK). 

This research received significant support and funding from Catchlight, the National Geographic Society, and the British Council.

As it is sacred territory, entry to the village experience will be limited to 40 people. 
This activity is closed to invited participants.

The first re:arc institute symposium in São Paulo proposes an investigative experience on values, practices and ways of thinking that express and care for the interconnections of all life, based on the concept of architectures of planetary well-being.

Over two days, in three sessions, the event will bring together artists, researchers, and cultural agents to share knowledge through lectures, presentations, performances, and discussion groups. The invited participants will bring experiences related to collectivity, ecology, territory, design, and architecture, offering perspectives that engage with the history of the space and its intersections between performance and revolutionary imagination.

The program will explore spatial practices through the lens of reparation and engagement, and propose a reorientation of the temporality with which we perceive and create the built environment. Participants' presences and perspectives engage in a profound dialogue with the space, enhancing its intersections between performance and revolutionary imagination.

September 19
17:00-23:00

ACT I: Reparation

In Dialogue with the Earth

Ailton Krenak & Paulo Tavares

Mutirão Theater: Choral Action: Rites of Possession and Transformation

Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona Association

Reflections on the Architecture of Reparation

Ana Flavia Magalhães Pinto & Paulo Tavares

September 20
10:00-14:00
ACT II: Rooting

Spatiality and Spiral Time: Opening Remarks

Leda Maria Martins

Temporalities and Spatial Practices: Round Table

Leda Maria Martins, Mother Celina of Xangô, Rose Afefé and Maya Quilolo

Moderated by Gabriela de Matos and Audrey Carolini, from the Cambará Institute

September 20
16:00-20:00
ACT III: Involvement

Amaro Freitas Y'Y

Involvements: Round Table

Taina de Paula, Jerá Guarani and Maria Alice Pereira da Silva

Moderated by Marcella Arruda

Perspectives on Practice

Without Walls, Palmares Laboratory-Action, RUÍNA Architecture and Group ][ Fresta

Empowerment: Closing Remarks

Joice Berth

More information and registration on the website www.arquiteturasdobemestarplanetario.com