Rehearsing green returns

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.

Participate in the program of debates, workshops and associated activities!

TODAY (10.10)

2:30 pm – table Risk-Free Periphery in the Context of Climate Change

4pm – table Knowing to Transform: Community Climate Risk Reduction and Adaptation Plans

6:30 pm – table Inclusive Adaptation: Nature-Based Solutions in the Peripheries

9am – Drawing Workshop: Oscar Niemeyer's Architecture in Ibirapuera Park and the Climate Challenge

IN THE NEXT DAYS (11 to 14.10)

ATTENTION the table Palmas: For 36 years, the ecological capital of Tocantins which would be held on 10/11 | 7pm was canceled.

11.10 and 12.10 | 9am – workshop Inventa(rio) Fronteiras: Playing for Multispecies Cities

11.10 | 10am – workshop Elémenterre teaching bag

11.10 | 11am – table Learning to inhabit the Anthropocene: the crisis of architecture

11.10 | 2pm – table Architecture for Learning and Civic Use

11.10 | 3pm – table Culture and Public Architecture

11.10 – 15h – workshop Elémenterre teaching bag

11.10 | 4pm – table Reconnecting with Nature & Circular Design

11.10 | 5pm – table Architecture of Belonging: Interpreting Heritage Through Place

12.10 | 10am – table Experience: Climate Refuges and Naturalized Public Spaces, with Eco-Neighborhood

12.10 | 10:30 am – table Childhoods and Climate: Climate Justice in Vulnerable Territories

12.10 | 10:30 am – Windsock Workshop with the Floating Collective

12.10 | 3pm – table Doing a lot with a little: architectures for a planet in transition with Esteban Benavides from Al Borde office

12.10 | 4:30 pm – table Earth – building a sustainable and democratic future

12.10 | 5:45 pm – table French presence at the Biennale and screening of the film AJAP – Albums of Young Architects and Landscape Architects

13.10 – activity Pantanal Action at IABsp

10/14 | 10am – table Urgent Panorama! Space as an act of permanence

14.10 | 6pm – Launch of the “Nature-Based Education” Guide

JOIN! IT'S ALL FREE!

And there's much more until October 19th!

NOTE OF CONDOLENCE

With deep sorrow, the Brazilian Institute of Architects – São Paulo Department (IABsp) mourns the passing of architect and landscape architect Kongjian Yu, a global leader in ecological urbanism, and the members of his team who accompanied him, tragically killed during the filming of a documentary. The institute is honored to have had him as a participant in the 14th São Paulo International Architecture Biennial, where his transformative vision strengthened the dialogue between global challenges and local realities. IABsp emphasizes that Yu's contribution, which transcends borders, will remain an inspiration for generations and expresses its condolences to China, to the families of all the deceased, to his friends, and to all those impacted by his genius and dedication. Read the full note here.

[Applied] Foreign Affairs