Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Comedor project – a soup kitchen – was created in response to the extreme weather events that devastated numerous cities in southern Brazil in May 2024 and the need to improve the conditions of emergency shelters that housed homeless people during this period.

Built at the Ana Neri State School in Porto Alegre, the project begins with a temporary intervention in the auditorium building—a small wooden structure, characteristic of the region's school architecture. Lightweight partitions—curtains suspended by steel cables—were installed in this space to delimit specific areas for each family and adapt the pavilion's use, providing greater privacy and habitability.

In a second stage of the intervention, with the return of classes at school, it was necessary to build a cafeteria for the temporary residents – a new building – that would function independently of the flow of students.

The proposed architecture therefore consists of a large roof and a linear table that occupy an empty sector of the school lot.

The choice of wood construction is part of an investigation that, in some way, permeates the projects developed by the office. It is a way to demonstrate the possibilities of using a low-cost, easily obtainable raw material that takes into account the existence of a local workforce with experience and significant practical knowledge of the material.

In this way, the proposal explores wood as an agile and economical construction technique with the choice of more accessible components, such as round eucalyptus wood for the main columns and beams and a structure of thin slats to support the roof.

To unify the intervention and the various wooden pieces, the green paint unifies the proposal, highlighting the roof within the school's built structure. The wood-protecting impregnating paint helps preserve the material and conceal minor imperfections, keeping the grain visible. The green structure interacts with the white polycarbonate tiles, creating a diffusely lit environment.

The project, initially conceived to serve as a dining hall for families, over time became a leisure space for students, a collective and community space.

Thus, the intervention led to a series of surprising interactions and uses. A playful space, which is used as a place for children to play, and even as a learning tool, where classes are taught outdoors.

The project represents an experiment in design and construction in a short period of time, a simple contribution – among so much to be done – as a response to this immense and unthinkable tragedy.
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Porto Alegre, RS
2024

Project implementation: Ecuador
Project development: Ecuador

Community water infrastructure to improve and strengthen the existing water network. A system of spaces for social interaction, appreciation, environmental care, and the transmission of knowledge about water protection. Shelters, weather stations for environmental monitoring, and meeting spaces.

La Chimba is located in the ancestral territory of the Kayambi tribe in northern Ecuador, near the Cayambe volcano. It's located in one of Ecuador's most important ecosystems, the Paramo, which boasts significant biodiversity and the territory's most important water sources.

La Chimba, with over a hundred years of historical resistance through self-management and self-organization, protects the territory and its water resources from various threats. Strengthening its infrastructure and reinforcing its social character is essential for its subsistence and future growth.

Community water infrastructure creates spaces to monitor, care for, and educate about the páramo territory, which provides water sources for life. In this way, the community values the work done in the past and strengthens processes to maintain the system in the future.

This architectural proposal is responsible for the site and the people of the community, who construct the buildings for collective use on participatory construction days called "Mingas" (mutirao), which encourage local work and knowledge exchange. The intention is to create spaces for access, meeting, and shelter through local techniques present in the community's buildings and terraces that, by their shape as retaining walls on slopes, integrate into the natural landscape, creating an intervention respectful of the páramo ecosystem.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Brazilian Institute of Architects of Tocantins (IAB/TO), sponsored by the City of Palmas, presents the linear urban parks of the city of Palmas: Cesamar, Indigenous Peoples and Pioneers, the latter in the design phase.
The inhabitants of Palmas understand that their urban parks are natural environments amidst the "accommodated" urban environment, and that they guarantee the quality of life and the environment in the city's evolutionary process, adapting it to the current climate emergency.

The Palmas Urban Project

While preserving the origins of the state of Tocantins and its ecological capital, Palmas (see panel 1), the urban design of Palmas—designed by architects Luís Fernado Cruvinel and Walfredo Antunes—was directly impacted by the region's environmental characteristics. In this sense, the preservation of the green spaces surrounding the water bodies that permeate Palmas' urban landscape has always been considered a priority for preservation and sustainable use of public resources.
The urban area is structured by the intersection of two arterial roads: Teotônio Segurado Avenue, running north-south; and JK Avenue, running east-west. At their intersection lies Praça dos Girassóis, the fourth-largest square in the world, where the headquarters of the three branches of government are located.
From this point on, the project envisioned gradual growth within a planned area of approximately 15km x 7km. However, its occupation prompted peripheral settlements, both north and south of the city's project, expanding its urban fabric to the current 25km x 8km.
However, whether planned or spontaneous, the preservation of the natural environment and the maintenance of the initial ecological biodiversity are respected in the implementation of the city and its elements, endorsing the ecological legacy of the occupation of the Palmas territory.

Cesamar Park

Palmas' first urban park. Its urban design, designed by GrupoQuatro, was designed by the then-President of the Tocantins Development Agency (AD Tocantins), Architect Aílton Lélis.
Like other urban parks, it's a meeting point for Palmas residents for hiking trails and offers leisure and sports facilities for all ages. In particular, the park offers a public swimming pool on the Brejo Comprido stream.

Indigenous Peoples Park and Pioneers Park

In other areas of the city, we have the Parque dos Povos Indígenas (Indigenous Peoples Park) to the north and, to the south, the proposed Parque dos Pioneiros (Pioneers Park). Both are established in areas initially reserved in the Palmas project and seek to offer more environmental and leisure services to families living nearby, similar to Parque Cesamar. For more details on the facilities offered in these parks, see panels 1 and 2.
We emphasize that the riverfront of Parque dos Pioneiros will be the subject of a national competition.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

On a scale like the city of São Paulo, tackling climate change requires the coordination of three factors: design solutions, urban planning, and public policies. This space seeks to demonstrate how government action is diverse and faces the challenge of addressing multiple scales, from the lot to the municipality, in addition to mobilizing diverse social actors.

In short, the City Hall space is an invitation to a gathering around a table where the topic revolves around São Paulo. It's a place for everyone to see our city, get to know it, and discuss its creation.

The space consists of a prism measuring 4 meters on a side, 1.3 meters high, and elevated 2 meters above the ground, which delimits the space; and a central model, measuring 1.5 by 2.1 meters, which serves as a meeting point. Externally, the exhibition presents visitors with a timeline titled "Parques Paulistanos: 200 anos de história" (São Paulo Parks: 200 Years of History), which displays all the years corresponding to the inauguration of municipal parks, as well as other information regarding the creation of public agencies and important events that shaped public policy development. Internally, the prism's walls are lined with screens displaying an explanatory video titled "São Paulo: A Sustainability Project." To locate the city's plans and projects within the territory, maps are projected onto a large topographical model. The profusion of images and viewpoints guided by a single audio track allows the video to be watched more than once, varying the desired focus.

The exhibition combines park projects, retrofit policies, new sustainable public buildings, and other government initiatives to demonstrate the complexity of intervening in a capital city with so many superlatives. Mentions include: the Master Plan; Downtown Requalification; Economic Subsidy; the new fleet of electric buses; the São Paulo Tram; the Connected Neighborhood: Sapopemba Terminal; the Waterway Plan; the São Paulo Aquatic Plan; Jardim da Luz Park; the Córrego do Bispo Linear Park; the Borda da Cantareira Parks; the Atlantic Forest Municipal Plan; Apurá-Búfalos Park; the Fazenda do Carmo Natural Park; the Cabeceiras do Aricanduva Natural Park; the Cidade Ademar Cultural Center; the Jardim do Éden Park; the Jardim Castelo Park; the Caulim Stream Park; Sampa+Rural; the Municipal Plan for Agroecology and Sustainable Rural Development; the City Hall's Operação Trabalho Program; and the Climate Action Plan.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Virginia building was inaugurated in 1951, designed by architect José Augusto Bellucci and engineer Luiz Maiorana.

The building was commissioned by the Matarazzo family to serve as a rental property for Virginia Matarazzo Ippolito. With 11 floors, two apartment blocks, and four shops on the ground floor, it was a high- and mid-income residential complex in its early decades.

With the economic decline of the central region in the 1970s, the building changed from residential to commercial and was gradually abandoned, closing its doors in 2019. In 2020, it was acquired by Somauma, a developer focused on retrofitting.

The new project, developed by Metrópole Arq, was based on an in-depth analysis of the existing building, aiming to adapt it to the new context while respecting its architectural qualities. The facade will be restored while maintaining its formal characteristics and finishes. The apartments were redesigned to meet the region's new housing demands, with units ranging from 26 to 182 m² that fit the building's modularity, preserving the parquet floors, access to balconies, large windows, high ceilings, good lighting, and natural ventilation. All window frames and railings were replaced, meeting the new space configurations, thermal and acoustic performance, and safety standards.

The circulation pipes were updated to meet safety standards. All plumbing and electrical installations were redone to meet the building's new demands.

The building features common areas for a gym, laundry facilities, and bike storage. The ground-floor shops will reopen to the sidewalk, and a gallery will be created connecting Martins Fontes and Álvaro de Carvalho streets.

A commercial space was designed on the roof, offering stunning views of the surrounding area. This space features a lightweight glued laminate structure and a garden with native species.

Metropolis Architects
In its two decades of existence, Metrópole_arq has been responsible for projects that are present in the country's cultural scene, both public and private, and of various scales. The firm focuses on expography and cultural heritage preservation, and its current partners, Anna Helena Villela, Silvio Oksman, and Ana Paula Pontes, actively participate, both jointly and individually, in projects developed in museums and cultural spaces throughout Brazil.

TECHNICAL DATA SHEET:
LOCATION: Sao Paulo, Brazil.
YEAR: 2025
METROPOLIS ARCHITECTS TEAM:
Silvio Oksman, Lia Soares, Mariah Peruzzo, Camila Vasconcelos, Amanda Klajner, Eric Dick, Fabiana Costa, Micaela Kosmalski.
INCORPORATION AND WORK:
Somauma
MANAGEMENT:
Tools Engineering
WOODEN STRUCTURES:
Ita Construtora
LIGHTING PROJECT:
Lux Projects
INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE
Imperfect Beauties
BIM MODELING:
Studio +1
SYSTEMS:
Adolfi, RRP Projects and RGK
STRUCTURES:
Emplatec
FRAME CONSULTING:
Polar Ltd.
FIREMEN:
Engeplot
SEALS AND PERFORMANCE:
Versatile
ACCESSIBILITY CONSULTING:
Inovatech

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Formosa Hi-Fi is a high-fidelity music listening bar located in an underground gallery within the Viaduto do Chá complex, built in the 1930s and now protected by conservation agencies. The project, developed in partnership with the firm Acústica e Sônica, focused on integrating acoustics, architecture, and heritage.

The space is accessed via an underground gallery that crosses Xavier de Toledo Street. It also opens onto the Fountain of Sighs, next to the staircase that leads from the Municipal Theater to the Anhangabaú Valley. Here, Formosa's space expands outward, offering an extraordinary urban perspective.

The entire space is lined with wooden acoustic panels, preserving the original marble walls and featuring a design inspired by the pattern of existing metalwork doors and windows. In the bar and DJ area, the same paneling features illuminated niches for displaying vinyl records.
A lighting scheme was designed for the ceiling. The fixtures are connected to an automation system that allows for infinite lighting combinations that can be synchronized with music.

The bar and DJ area were positioned in a ribbon, utilizing an existing counter facing the room, preserving its spaciousness. Behind the wooden paneling is a service corridor, where refrigerators, storage, equipment, etc. are located. The kitchen, bar, and restroom areas have raised floors to avoid any disturbances to the existing flooring. The only existing restroom was renovated and adapted to accommodate a level, accessible restroom.

All electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems have been updated. The new systems are visible through the ceiling, but are barely noticeable because they pass above the light fixtures.

Metropolis Architects
In its two decades of existence, Metrópole_arq has been responsible for projects that are present in the country's cultural scene, both public and private, and of various scales. The firm focuses on expography and cultural heritage preservation, and its current partners, Anna Helena Villela, Silvio Oksman, and Ana Paula Pontes, actively participate, both jointly and individually, in projects developed in museums and cultural spaces throughout Brazil.

Acoustics and Sonics
Acústica & Sônica, founded in 1962, operates in interrelated areas such as acoustics, noise control, audio and video, stage lighting, stage technology, and spatial planning. Since 2001, it has maintained a permanent partnership with the North American company Akustiks (South Norwalk, CT), with projects completed in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The team has extensive experience in historic and cultural buildings, notably the Sala São Paulo, Sala Cecília Meireles, the Municipal Theaters of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Praça das Artes, Teatro Cultura Artística, Teatro Castro Alves, David Geffen Hall (New York), Teatro Amira de la Rosa (Colombia), and the Convento do Carmo (Salvador), among others.

LOCATION:
Sao Paulo, 2025
INTERVENTION PROJECT:
Acoustics and Sonics and Metrópole Arq
METROPOLE ARQ TEAM:
Silvio Oksman, Anna Helena Villela,
Camila Vasconcelos, Lia Soares,
Eric Dick, Fabiana Costa.
ACOUSTIC AND SONIC TEAM:
José Augusto Nepomuceno, Julio Gaspar and Julia Batista
MANAGEMENT AND FACILITIES:
100 Engineering, Tatiana Bianchi and Rosana Nakano
CONSTRUCTION: Lar Engenharia
AUTOMATION: Electric Multi-Purpose Table and Automation
LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY: Lux Projetos
FURNITURE: Faher
PHOTOGRAPHY: Dandara Bettino
AREA: 940 m²

Project implementation: Australia
Project development: Australia

Peter Stutchbury Architecture (PSA) is a collection of unique individuals who pursue architecture with an open mind and experimental approach. They possess the talent that maintains standards of design, quality and delivery. Their comprehension of the tasks of architecture, along with their abilities to improve work, unmistakably contribute to the social and professional result of the firm’s projects.

PSA’s work is expertly and inventively responsive to the environmental and physical context in both form and technology. Seeking beauty and clarity, whilst always keeping the land in mind their built work sits comfortably and conscientiously within its context, it connects.

PSA is well known in Australia for their innovative approach to sustainability and design within the practice of Architecture. The principal of the firm Peter Stutchbury has practiced independently since 1981 producing a wide variety of work. Projects have been published and acclaimed internationally. PSA’s work is represented in editions of Phaidon’s World Atlas.

Since 1995 the firm has won 75 Royal Australian Institute of Architects Awards, including 17 National Awards. In 2003 PSA became the first practice to win both of the nation’s major architectural Awards, repeating this feat in 2005. In 1999 they won the overall National Metal Industries Award of Excellence and in 2000 and 2008 The Australian Timber Award. In 2001, PSA’s work was the major contributor to the University of Newcastle winning the Prime Minister’s National Environmental Banksia Award. In 2006 PSA was runner-up in the “Innovative Architectures – Design and Sustainability” Award out of Italy and in 2008 the firm won the International Living Steel Award in Russia. Peter Stutchbury Architecture have exhibited work across Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, France, New Zealand, South Africa, Namibia, USA, Japan and Slovenia and at the Venice Architecture Biennale in Italy in both 2006 and 2008. PSA is in an annual exhibitor at the GA Gallery in Tokyo.

Since the early ‘90s the firm has won or been placed in 21 multiple National and international competitions whilst producing a range of buildings through all the disciplines of Architecture. From the small Israel House at Pittwater (1995 Robin Boyd Commendation) to the significant Life Sciences Newcastle University Building (2001 Sir John Sulman Award), their work consistently maintains a high level of design recognition. The firm has completed works overseas in PNG, Vanuatu, Japan, Russia and project in Taiwan.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Brumadinho Memorial is a space of memory and resistance, built at the site of the Córrego do Feijão Mine dam collapse in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, to honor the 272 victims of the country's greatest humanitarian tragedy. The result of a historic mobilization of family members gathered at Avabrum, the memorial arose from the desire to safeguard the victims' bodily parts and to reframe the mud-scarred territory, transforming it into a place of reflection, learning, and transformation. Open to the public in 2025, it is managed by the Brumadinho Memorial Foundation, created in 2023 to oversee its management and foster research and education projects on memory, the environment, law, architecture, and history.

The project, designed by architect Gustavo Penna and his team at Gustavo Penna Arquitetos Associados (GPAA), proposes a symbolic and sensitive path that begins with an entrance pavilion made of concrete stained with mining waste. Its angular, fragmented forms evoke the shock of the dam collapse, while beams of light penetrate the cracks and, every year at the exact time of the tragedy, illuminate a crystal druse in tribute to the "jewels," as family members call their loved ones.

From there, the fissure, a 230-meter gash in the ground, leads visitors to the epicenter of the disaster. The walls display the names of the victims, emerging one by one along the way. At the central point, the suspended sculpture known as the "weeping head" sheds tears onto the concrete and carries water, a symbol of memory and purification, to the reflecting pool next to the observation deck. Surrounding it, a grove of 272 yellow ipês blooms as a sign of life and continuity.

The Memory and Testimony spaces, designed in consultation with family members, house personal objects, records of the tragedy, and the victims' bodily parts, received with dignity and profound respect. For Carlos Antônio Leite Brandão, the memorial is a "fortress of grief," whose glimmers of light break through the darkness and transform silence into presence. Milton Hatoum describes the memorial as a civilizing gesture, capable of "giving aesthetic form to the tragedy" and inviting new generations to look critically at the past with an eye to the future.

The Brumadinho Memorial takes on the task of keeping the memory alive and affirming the dignity of the victims, refusing to be forgotten and reaffirming the right to memory as the foundation of collective life.

Project implementation: China
Project development: USA

Your Greenhouse Is Your Living Room is an environmental device that amalgamates the roles of a greenhouse, an outdoor kitchen, and a living room. It speculates on the agency of growing vegetables and sharing food as a collective act to combat environmental extremes. Designed for abandoned and underused urban spaces, the pavilion features an assemblage of movable and operable furniture that animates the surroundings with vegetable growing racks, kitchen counters, and folding tables. When enclosed, it serves as a greenhouse that encourages growing activities; when opened, it transforms into an outdoor living room that fosters new forms of community sharing in urban life.
The pavilion embodies a microclimate of care that nurtures both plants and humans. It promotes a system of collective farming, where contaminated soil from nearby farmland is treated on site and stored in portable pots designed for communal growing and product exchange among community members. Rainwater, harvested and filtered through the metal reservoir overhead, circulates in the pavilion for gardening and cooking activities. Owing to spatial tactics that mitigate the challenges posed by extreme weather in a subtropical climate, such as strategic gaps between panels that allow for passive cooling, the structure provides an optimal environment for plants, providing the visitors with balanced conditions of ventilation and shading to co-inhabit the space with plants and other species.

Office for Roundtable is a design practice and research collective led by Leyuan Li, currently based in Denver, Colorado, and Guangzhou, China. Their projects span a broad spectrum of different types and scales at the cross-section between interior and urban realms, exploring spaces and events that facilitate sharing among diverse communities to create collective narratives. Recent built projects have been featured on PLOT, ArchDaily, Designboom, Architect’s Newspaper, Gooood, and KoozArch, among others. Most recently, Office for Roundtable was awarded an Honorable Mention in AN’s Best of Practice Awards in the Architect (New Firm) - Southwest category in 2025.
JXY Studio is an interdisciplinary architecture and art studio co-founded by Yue Xu and Jiaxun Xu. Our work aims to push the boundaries of traditional architectural design and explore innovative approaches to the construction of space and narrative through a broader range of mediums, involving the fields of design, research, and visual arts, incorporating imagery, painting, installation, photography, moving image, and other multimedia forms. Combined with extensive experience in digital creation, spatial installation, artistic re-conceptualization of space, and innovative urbanism, each project of the studio is grounded in both logical research and inventive practice. Drawing inspiration from the rich cultural heritage of Lingnan and the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures, we use this unique perspective to fuel the interdisciplinary explorations of architecture and art.

Project implementation: USA
Project development: Austria, Latvia, USA

Our city’s future weather is not known yet. But the weather always has and will be a permanent companion in our lives.

Weather and water are intricately connected forces that shape our environment and influence life on Earth in profound ways.

The Institute of Weather Modification examines the entanglement of weather modification, hydrological engineering, and urban resilience in California. How have societies sought to manipulate atmospheric and hydrological conditions—from indigenous land practices to twentieth-century weather control experiments? What role do infrastructures of water—dams, reservoirs, desalination plants—play when paired with speculative atmospheric interventions such as cloud seeding?

The video work follows the Los Angeles Aqueduct and its extensions—reservoirs, UV treatment plants, hot springs, lakes, and cloud-seeding stations—tracing the infrastructures and landscapes that sustain the metropolis while pointing to the controversies that have shaped them.
Ultimately, the project asks what it means to build cities in dialogue with the atmosphere itself. If architecture has long been concerned with sheltering us from the elements, how might it now respond to their intensification and manipulation?

Studio Paradox

Operating between documentary and the imaginary, Julia Obleitner and Helvijs Savickis work across installation, film, and architecture. As founders of Studio Paradox, they address contemporary political, ecological, and urban conditions through a multidisciplinary lens. Their practice often engages with hidden or large-scale infrastructures, examining their ecological consequences, their role in shaping future urban trajectories, and their entanglement with collective memory. Their projects have been presented internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, the Tbilisi Biennale, and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture Los Angeles, among others.

Project implementation: Spain, Italy, Brazil
Project development: Spain, Brazil

This work is a collage-like journey through several cities without many apparent similarities, but connected by a common perspective that highlights aspects intimately linked to the environment, such as vegetation, its relationship with water, and the climate. The approach is neither technical nor academic, but rather phenomenological: when faced with stimuli such as heat, poetic solutions are proposed, sometimes looking to the past for answers, attempting to seduce the viewer, inviting them to forget prejudices, unlock their imagination, and connect with their physical well-being.

This line of work, which began years ago in Madrid, was developed in depth in the "Fantastic Guide to São Paulo," a faux illustrated tourist guide published in 2015 that blends reality and fiction. If the tourist guide is a narrative for mass consumption of the contemporary city, this project builds on that idea and proposes to normalize a utopian narrative, presenting surprising situations to the reader as if they were everyday, connecting cities where the author has lived, connecting problems that seem local but are global.

The drawings on display serve as sketches to draw attention to the Biennial's thematic axes. To "Preserve forests and reforest cities," it is necessary to ensure optimal conditions for the survival of bumblebees, thrushes, and other pollinators, which involves caring for existing vegetation. Although the presence of water was decisive for the founding of cities, in their development we have forgotten its importance. We cannot "Coexist with water" without knowing it exists, so a map of each city is displayed, with its waterways and infrastructure developed and then buried and forgotten. "Renovate more and build green" implies preserving the architectural heritage of historically valuable popular buildings such as Neomudejar or transforming interior courtyards into water gardens for cooling off in the summer to "Ensure climate justice." But it also involves transforming the Minhocão (Minhocão) or the Puente de Vallecas (Vallecas Bridge). Both are very similar examples of large-scale infrastructure projects designed for cars in the 1970s that act as physical boundaries, accentuate inequality between neighborhoods, and whose associated problems have mobilized the neighborhood for years. Instead of opting for total demolition, the project presents modifications with the aim of redefining them, valuing the enormous material resources invested in their construction, but also their symbolic power as a monument to the past adapted to the needs of the future.

The drawings have been adapted to the exhibition format of this Biennial and will be part of the publication São Paulo and other Fantastic Cities, published by Lote42 and released at the end of 2025.

Project implementation: India
Project development: Brazil, Portugal

Mumbai, located on the island of Salsette in the state of Maharashtra, is consolidating itself as the largest and most dynamic construction site on the planet. The city faces an extreme urban space crisis, with a population density almost five times higher than that of São Paulo—meaning that Mumbai packs many more people into significantly lower-rise buildings. This overconcentration creates an environment where space has become a scarce, limited, and absurdly expensive resource.

The competition for every square meter is so fierce that vacant lots are virtually non-existent. Owning an apartment in central neighborhoods has become an unattainable dream not only for the low-income population but also for the professional middle class. The urban landscape completely lacks significant green spaces, and urban voids, essential for the city's breathing, have been completely eliminated.

Faced with this dystopian reality, two visionary proposals from the thesis “Collateral Spaces: Support for Imagining Mumbai's New Voids,” developed at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto under the supervision of Professors Jorge Figueira and Teresa Cálix, offer innovative solutions.

1. Airspace: New Elevated Urban Territories

The proposal leverages the 250 kilometers of Mumbai's elevated metro viaducts, particularly Line 7, which traverses several slums in the Mogra-Gundavali area. In contrast to the Slum Rehabilitation Authority's approach—which conventionally utilizes real estate capital for social housing—the "Aerial Space" proposes a radical social experiment by occupying the non-building space above the tracks.

This linear, meandering building intentionally houses different social classes in a single multipurpose megastructure. Coexistence takes place on a continuous, neutral platform, with all units guaranteed to be bright and airy, challenging the usual pattern of precarious social housing. This bold intervention would free up 23 hectares of land for the creation of parks, playgrounds, and plazas, transforming infrastructure into housing architecture and converting marginal spaces into new urban centers.

2. Skyscraper of Air: The Architecture of the Immaterial

This proposal confronts the transformation of Parel's industrial voids into condominiums and shopping malls, instead presenting an immaterial verticality in the form of an artificial microclimate. The project echoes visionaries like Buckminster Fuller and his climate-controlled dome proposal for Manhattan, creating a permanent atmospheric "cloud" over the former factories.

The system combines monumental fig trees with hundreds of sensor-controlled high-pressure misters that maintain a constant temperature of 21°C. The mist takes on symbolic colors according to the Indian cultural calendar—saffron on Independence Day, vibrant hues during Holi. Perceived only by the mist and treetops, this "parallelepiped of air and humidity" serves as a manifesto for the preservation of urban voids, offering a cooled public space dedicated to leisure, cricket, and the simple enjoyment of citizens.

Vazio Inc.: Between Practice and Urban Research

Vazio S/A Arquitetura e Urbanismo operates at the intersection of conventional practice and critical research on urban voids. It adopts a proactive approach that understands informality, voids, and market forces as powerful drivers of new urban projects. In addition to traditional building work, it develops experiments through ideas competitions, academic publications, partnerships with social groups, and ephemeral urban interventions, always seeking new connections between contemporary culture and the production of architectural space.

Project implementation: Switzerland
Project development: Switzerland

The restoration work, which began in 1994 and is still ongoing, involves the ruins of dry stone shelters for people and animals in the Alpine pastures of Sceru, Giumello, Quarnei, Luzzone, and Piora, and in the Ticino Alps, at an altitude of over 2,000 meters in Switzerland. The restoration work specifically involves the collection of stones from within the perimeter wall of these buildings, abandoned since the 1950s.

Currently, the construction of new buildings in these highly valuable natural landscapes is only permitted for public-interest projects, such as hydroelectric infrastructure, forest roads, water intakes, avalanche shelters, alpine refuges, etc. Private individuals may maintain existing buildings, respecting their original function. Only in rare cases is their conversion into vacation homes permitted.

In these reconstructions, the functional and private component of the building, whose maintenance would require reconstruction, is eliminated through the creation of a compact volume devoid of usable spaces. On the contrary, the building's public value, understood as a geometrically significant presence in the landscape, is fully restored. The surrounding space, once cleared of debris, also recovers its original value.

The restorations are carried out on a voluntary basis. Friends, students, family, and colleagues participate. The local population and the owners of the restored ruins appreciate the idealism and effectiveness of this work, which impacts the realities to which they are emotionally connected.

The restorations restore meaning to abandoned pastures. They represent the epilogue of a civilization that survived in Ticino until the advent of modernity. Factors such as sustainability, simplicity, durability, participation, idealism, coherence, and beauty ensure the quality of the interventions over time, but above all, they consolidate the presence of positive values in society.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Dryland Garden is a temporary garden, redesigned and replanted each year. Irrigated only by rainfall, the garden germinates, grows, flowers, produces seeds, and dries out within a few months, thus adapting to the seasonality of the Cerrado.

Its flowers occupy the central space of the Central Institute of Sciences (ICC) – an iconic building of Brazilian modern architecture, designed by Oscar Niemeyer and João Filgueiras Lima (Lelé) in 1962. It extends across the building's sequential modules, measuring 730 meters long by 15 meters wide. With over 5,000 m² of planted area on a slab, the garden thrives on a thin layer of soil, without irrigation. When the rains cease, its seeds are harvested for use in the next cycle. The garden uses short-cycle, exotic flowers and native Cerrado grasses in a naturalistic composition, inspired by the Cerrado's grassland formations.

Emerging as an integration between the extension project and management of the green areas of the University of Brasília, the Jardim de Sequeiro has enabled savings and improvement of the central space of the University, while also promoting coordination with teaching, research and innovation activities.

As a temporary and experimental garden, Sequeiro can be redesigned and improved each year, enabling the continuous expansion of its initial scope and the development of its themes in diverse research and workshops, based on interactions with different disciplinary fields and academic experiences.

The Sequeiro Garden has already completed five cycles between 2020 and 2025. During this period, 142 volunteers and scholarship holders participated directly in the project, forming teams that are renewed annually. 118 themed workshops were offered (photography, watercolor, floral arrangements, seed collection, native bees, fabric dyeing, guided tours, and many others), with support from professors from UnB, other educational institutions, and the community at large. Scientific research and collaborative garden planting with ESALQ/USP and UNESP/Bauru have been essential throughout this process, as well as what took place between 2022 and 2024 at the Inhotim Institute in Minas Gerais.

The project won an award at the 5th Latin American Biennial of Landscape Architecture in 2022. More recently, it was chosen by Plano Coletivo to be part of, along with other references, its project entitled (RE)INVENTION, at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

Jardim de Sequeiro, 2020, is a project conceived and coordinated by Dr. Júlio Barêa Pastore, a professor of landscaping at the School of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Brasília. The project is carried out in partnership with the UnB City Hall, which is responsible for managing the university's green spaces. Participants include PRC staff, scholarship students, volunteers, and the general public.

More information: Instagram: jardimdesequeiro@gmail.com; Youtube: jardimdesequeiro Email: jardimdesequeirpo@gmail.com

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Ilê Asé Odé Ibualamo, a Traditional Territorial Unit of Yoruba origin, and its collective living spaces were materially destroyed on December 15, 2022. The lush vegetation and the watercourse, rich in history, also succumbed during the channeling of Cadaval Stream for the construction of a public road, giving way to the cold, gray asphalt that took away its breath, suffocated the earth, and silenced the waters. Ilê Asé Odé Ibualamo represented the great sustaining tree of that peripheral urban environment, like a great Baobab with its memories, knowledge, and practices transferred here from Africa.

The project emerged from the struggle of the Ilê Odé Front, conceived by Odecidarewá Zana de Odé, which brought together architects, urban planners, teachers, researchers, and peripheral leaders to compose a study that gave rise to this project, which integrates traditional wisdom and its technologies in response to the violence suffered. The proposal operates as a tool for struggle and resignification of the memory of Ilê, but also of an ancestral urbanity. We propose a new reading of the city based on a critique of the hygienist methodologies of exclusion of Black territoriality, which guided the development of the São Paulo metropolis. The set of facilities, based on the culture of Traditional Peoples of African Descent, is a practice of re-existence and re-enchantment of life, which resignifies and heals a large open wound in the city. A possible rescue for a future that must also be ancestral.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Regenera Dilúvio Consortium – Profill Engineering and Environment, Consult Engineering and Assessments and Pezco Economics

The Consortium Urban Operation Regenera Dilúvio (Dilúvio Regenerates Urban Development) seeks to integrate urban development, environmental sustainability, and infrastructure, considering the impacts of recent climate events in Porto Alegre. This 25-year plan focused on the implementation of a linear park on the banks of the Arroio Dilúvio, a tributary of the Guaíba River, in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul.

The project was developed in response to a request from the Porto Alegre Department of Environment, Urbanism, and Sustainability (SMAMUS), which monitors and contributes to the studies. The project was developed by a consortium formed by the companies Profill Engenharia e Ambiente, Consult Engenharia e Avaliações, and Pezco Economics, with general coordination by architect and urban planner Marcelo Ignatios and urban design coordination by architect and urban planner Marlon Rubio Longo.

The OUC's structuring was explored across multiple work fronts, encompassing urban, environmental, urban mobility, economic, social, and demographic studies, and legal aspects, as well as a communication plan for the process, for public discussion. The project addresses solutions for drainage and sanitation issues, with the distribution of green spaces and rainwater drainage, improved mobility at multiple scales, as well as new facilities, the upgrading of precarious settlements, and the production of social housing.

The linear park was structured as an urban environmental corridor, integrated with a system of green areas and drainage infrastructure, to promote the restoration of tree-lined areas along the banks, encourage recreational uses in neighboring blocks, and connect squares and existing vegetation fragments. These facilities are implemented across the entire territory, distributing the reserve and increasing soil infiltration, combining traditional infrastructure (gray networks) with nature-based solutions (green and blue networks).

The OUC Regenera Dilúvio project foresees the possibility of distributed densification in the territory, which, in an optimistic scenario, would reach approximately 60,000 additional residents in new vertical developments within 25 years. Growth and the attraction of new jobs are boosted by infrastructure and environmental improvements to the area, partly financed by the sale of Certificates of Additional Construction Potential. With an expected revenue of R$ 1.46 billion in current values, the certificates correspond to approximately 4 million m² of new built area, obtained through the densification of 65 hectares of land.

In addition to the planned investment program, which totals approximately R$1.76 billion by 2050 and includes other sources of funding, incentive strategies were planned for the creation and strengthening of central areas in the territory, consolidating a new axis of concentration for urban densification and development in Porto Alegre.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

FICA is part of the Community Property Association, which has been working since 2015 to provide access to decent housing for low-income families, acquiring and managing properties in well-located areas, through the provision of the Social Housing Service.

Since 2023, FICA's Morar Primeiro Program has been providing housing to 60 previously homeless people through a partnership with Father Júlio Lancellotti. The program is based on the international Housing First methodology, which advocates that housing is the first (and most essential) step toward social reintegration for people in situations of extreme vulnerability.

We brought to the Biennial the program developed for the population most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis: homeless people—those who contribute least to climate change and suffer most from its effects, lacking shelter and experiencing extremely fragile socioeconomic and health conditions. The Morar Primeiro program is a compelling response to the intersection of the climate and housing crises, guaranteeing safe housing, support for accessing income and employment, the right to the city, and improved health, education, and citizenship.

To make the program viable, FICA acquired vacant and underutilized houses and apartments near the areas where the families served by the program lived. FICA manages the property, condominium, and social services, and the families receive ongoing and personalized psychosocial support. Our multidisciplinary team includes social workers, psychologists, lawyers, architects, and urban planners, as well as a network of partners from various fields and specialties.

Our installation is a 1:1 scale floor plan of a typical Morar Primeiro apartment. Upon entering this space, Biennial visitors have access to data on the impact of the Morar Primeiro program and the FICA Social Housing Service. On the exterior of the floor plan, we present data on the housing crisis in Brazil and São Paulo. The installation is complemented by a projection, on one of the Oca walls, of a photo of the underside of the viaduct occupied by the families before they moved into the Morar Primeiro units.

Project implementation: USA
Project development: USA

OPEN-GROUND is a proposal for an architecture of outdoor public leisure for hot, humid, toxic, and flood-prone climates. Modeled on the shaded sports courts typical of Houston, the project deploys a thick roof, hollow ground, and thermal chimneys to shade and cool this difficult environment while making a space for community gathering.

The space frame roof is loosely filled with recycled insulation material, functioning as a thermal barrier to slow heat gain in the courts beneath. Belowground, an array of tubular chambers functions as a stormwater detention, toxicity filter, and water harvesting system. Connecting the roof and reservoirs below, a series of cylindrical ventilation structures provide conduits for buoyant air. These thermal stacks create a microclimatic engine, using temperature, humidity, and pressure differentials to ventilate and cool the open-air space.

Not only does this cooling center build up the capacity for on-site water detention, it also proposes how climate infrastructures can function beyond bare shelter. OPEN-GROUND offers the political position that the role of architecture in the Anthropocene is to hybridize the relationship between public life and terrestrial systems. The project’s underbelly of pipes and conduits, crisscrossing beams, and soil substrates imagines architecture as part of a planetary stack, mediating a site’s geologies, hydrologies, and atmospheres to offer a new space to gather under the sun.

HOME-OFFICE is a research and design collaborative that explores the reciprocity between architectural types, their technical assemblies, and the environment. HOME-OFFICE was founded by Brittany Utting and Daniel Jacobs in 2017 and is based in Houston, Texas. Brittany Utting is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Rice University and Daniel Jacobs is an Instructional Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Houston.

Project implementation: USA
Project development: USA

Trees are considered by urban planners and designers to be effective green infrastructure to mitigate the impacts of extreme heat. However, the urban distribution of tree canopy is often correlated to class and race. In Miami, for example, studies by environmental and policy scholars have demonstrated that poorer, racialized neighborhoods have fewer trees than affluent ones. Despite afforestation initiatives, two main problems have persisted in the past decade. First, municipalities can only plant trees in public-owned areas, which can be limiting in scope. Second, the lack of investment in tree maintenance results in “green wasting”– tree saplings do not always survive the first 5 to 10 years before they mature enough to provide effective canopies. In these decisive years, community engagement is crucial to establish systems of continuous care between humans and vegetal life.

This project addresses urban afforestation as both an environmental and an socio-economic project, in which architecture can support a culture of reciprocal care between trees and people. It adapts botanical “shade house” structures ubiquitous in South Florida’s agri- and horticultural areas to the urban context. The interventions equip public and residual spaces with the temporary shade needed to support tree maintenance and articulate community engagements. The goal is to provide an architectural strategy for government-run programs such as tree giveaways, composting, and botanical education accessible by the public at little cost.

Project development: Brazil

The project proposes a green infrastructure and Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) strategy for Morro da Formiga, in Rio de Janeiro, a territory characterized by informal settlement on steep slopes, insufficient infrastructure, and high vulnerability to landslides. The proposal is based on a careful analysis of the site and the recognition of environmental knowledge and practices developed by the community itself, understood as socio-environmental technologies capable of promoting resilience even outside of formal planning. The goal is to improve public and residual spaces, integrating risk mitigation actions, environmental valorization, and strengthening existing sociocultural dynamics.

The intervention area comprises a 34,000 m² section under power lines, which forms a connecting axis between the urban fabric, the hillside, and the Tijuca Forest. The design organizes continuous strips of open space along the slopes, creating ecological and social buffers. Planned interventions include the redevelopment of the Cascata River, widening its riverbed and installing filter gardens; expanding the Hortas Cariocas community program, including a seedling nursery and support areas; and implementing agroforestry systems, composting, and green drainage solutions. These actions are coordinated to connect with existing initiatives, incorporating the knowledge accumulated by residents in environmental management and expanding their reach.

The project is structured around three central guidelines: articulation, connecting fragmented spaces and bringing urban occupation closer to open areas; enhancing, expanding, and strengthening socio-environmental projects; and preserving, protecting native vegetation, water bodies, and cultural knowledge. The strategy also envisages the replication of typologies in areas of greater geotechnical risk, including the implementation of evapotranspiration basins for decentralized sewage treatment and the restoration of slopes with adapted vegetation. By reinforcing the role of the Cascata River as a structuring element, a system is created that integrates ecological infrastructure, living spaces, and community facilities, establishing a gradual transition between the forest and the urban fabric.

Beyond a set of physical interventions, the proposal constitutes a collaborative process that recognizes the community as a protagonist in the transformation of the territory. The incorporation of local knowledge, combined with high-performance environmental solutions, allows for the construction of a multifunctional and adaptive landscape, capable of responding to climate extremes and historical inequalities, promoting safety, belonging, and quality of life.

About the author:
Larissa Scheuer is an architect and urban planner with a degree from FAU-UFRJ and works as a landscape architect at Embyá – Ecological Landscaping. With experience in landscape architecture and urban planning, her work has been recognized with several national awards, including the Arquitetas e Arquitetos do Amanhã Award, third place in the Grandjean de Montigny Award, and selection as a finalist for the Tomie Ohtake AkzoNobel Prize.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The city of Foz do Iguaçu, established in 1914, bears the scars of Brazil's history in its urban fabric. The construction of the Itaipu hydroelectric plant left its mark on the territory, occupying an area larger than the city's current urban footprint. The land to be occupied by the Ecopark is part of this process of urban occupation and redefinition. It's an ongoing, tortuous process, but one that reveals a vision for the future that's sorely needed in the face of the environmental collapse we're already facing as a society.

Construction of the plant began in 1974, amid the military dictatorship. To minimize environmental impact, areas in the city were set aside for various purposes. The current site was formerly a nursery for reforestation around the dam. Although it seems speculative, if this area had not been set aside for this purpose, it would likely have been swallowed up by the city's expansion, as today, the perimeter of the site is already densely populated. This reveals a tortuous process of historical recycling: without Itaipu, there would be no flooding for the dam; without the dam, there would be no need for nurseries for new seedlings; without the need for reforestation, there would be no urban vegetation reserve, which now results in a new park for the city. As Eduardo Galeano stated over 50 years ago, "in the history of mankind, every act of destruction finds its response, sooner or later, in an act of creation" (Galeano, 1978: p. 396).

André Prevedello is an architect and researcher. He was a director of AP Arquitetos in 2010 (www.aparquitetos.com.br), with projects and awards in Brazil, South America, and Europe. He holds a bachelor's and master's degree from the Federal University of Paraná and a postgraduate degree in hybrid arts from the Federal University of Technology of Paraná. He is pursuing a doctoral research degree with a scholarship from the Lusófona University of Lisbon. He is a researcher for SOS Climate Waterfront H2020-MSCA-RISE-2018, under the European Union's Horizon 2022 program, with research conducted in Portugal, Greece, and Sweden. He is a professor of theory and history. He has won the IAB-PR 2021 and IAB-SC 2021 awards, BUILD – Sustainable Building Awards England, Best Spatial Architecture Design Studio, and the IAB MS 2023 Award. He also won first place in the Eco Parque Itaipu, first place in the Requalification of the Salão Nobre and UFCSPA Theater, first place in the Pelotas City Council, first place in the Colinas Cooperativa Cascavel, first place in the Salvador International Project Seminar Competition, and first place in Caixa Econômica – Solutions for low-cost housing, among others. He is a constant contributor to lectures, conferences, reviews, and exhibitions.

Tais Mendes is a geologist with a degree from the Federal University of Paraná. She is a project manager at AP Arquitetos. She has experience managing highly complex projects, having worked on hydroelectric projects in Brazil, Peru, and Guyana. At AP Arquitetos, she was responsible for managing several projects throughout Brazil, including the SESC Mogi das Cruzes Unit, the new headquarters of the São Paulo Military Police Battalion, the SESC Balneário Mato Grosso do Sul unit, the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFCSPA) Theater, and the new Pelotas City Hall, among others.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil, Mexico

Invisible Cities, Incredible People (cipesin.com) is a participatory media project that uses audiovisual resources to give voice and visibility to community leaders in Latin America. In urban peripheries, precarious housing and the lack of basic infrastructure remain major challenges, faced daily by residents who often find solutions to collective issues in their own local leaders. Their initiatives, although transformative, remain invisible beyond their territories. The project seeks precisely to break this silence by documenting and disseminating stories of mobilization and solidarity that reveal the power of excluded communities.

The initiative began as a pilot project during the postdoctoral research of Bianca Moro de Carvalho, a professor at the Federal University of Amapá (UFA), at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo. The project was supported by a CAPES grant and supervised by Professor Dr. Angélica Benatti Alvim. From the outset, it collaborated with researchers from the Federal University of Amapá (UNIFAP), Mackenzie University, and the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez (Mexico), resulting in documentaries that portray the lives of residents in various Latin American contexts. Currently, it is part of the research project of the same name at UNIFAP and has its own platform, cipesin.com, which hosts the films produced and new narratives.

Stories have already been recorded in seven cities: Macapá and Santana (Amapá), Paraisópolis (São Paulo), Goiânia (Goiás), São Félix do Coribe (Bahia), Mexico City, and Ciudad Juárez. The documentaries' authorship and filming are the result of a shared direction between the project's coordinators and the volunteer collaboration of professionals: photographer Guy Veloso filmed in the Sertão region of Bahia; Mariana Contreras-Saldaña recorded Ciudad Juárez; Selenne Galeana Cruz worked in Mexico City; Willian Santiago in Paraisópolis; and Filemon Tiago in Goiânia. This network strengthens the reach and broadens the diversity of perspectives. In all cities, the stories reveal leaders who face social inequalities, lack of access to housing, education, healthcare, and political representation. Despite the adversities, they demonstrate enormous capacity for mobilization, coordinating practices ranging from cultural workshops and community food to demanding public policies.

The methodology used is participatory media, introduced at UNIFAP in 2017 by filmmaker Peter Lucas, a professor at New York University and The New School, and author of the book "Viva a Favela: Direitos Humanos e Incluição Visual no Brasil, dez anos de fotojonalismo" (Live the Favela: Human Rights and Visual Inclusion in Brazil, Ten Years of Photojournalism). Its proposal is based on audiovisual production in conjunction with the residents themselves, allowing them to narrate reality from their perspective. This practice democratizes communication, reinforces community leadership, and transforms documentaries into tools for social inclusion, critical reflection, and the promotion of human rights.

The results are already demonstrating impact: strengthening international academic networks, creating spaces for debate on the right to the city, and encouraging communities to produce their own audiovisual recordings.

Invisible Cities, Incredible People is, therefore, more than a research project: it is a movement to listen to and recognize silenced voices. By uniting teaching, research, and outreach, it promotes transnational exchanges and brings distant worlds closer together, contributing to the construction of more just, supportive, and resilient societies.

Project implementation: India
Project development: India

This project is an intervention within a unique urban ecosystem - a network of fishing ponds, created and managed by members of the Koli fishing community, in a mangrove forest of the Mithi River, despite all odds.

Dharavi Koliwada, an urban fishing village of the Kolis, was once a vibrant, bustling neighbourhood surrounded by the Mithi River Estuary. Today, all of it is entrapped by the larger city. Yet, the estuarine ecosystem continues to survive in a dense, concretised urban context with vast amounts of pollution and waste choking the river.

The ponds represent an indigenous, nature-based livelihood initiative of the Koli community.
Their efforts illustrate co-dependent human-nature relationships as the key to conservation efforts. The action-based participatory project hopes to leverage the community's indigenous knowledge and restore a dwindling connection with their aqueous surroundings. The first concrete step of the project is a participatory landscape intervention on the last remaining commons within the habitat they want to restore.

The community approached urbz to help build a shared program and vision to guide the collective actions needed to achieve their restoration objectives. Together they have outlined a vision and strategy to facilitate the community who have already begun reviving ancestral aquaculture ponds. After several workshops, exhibitions, and focus group discussions to engage diverse community stakeholders from the locality, a list of challenges has been identified.

The pressing challenge is accessing these landscapes. Fisher families need unimpeded access to tend to their habitat. A small strip of common lands along the river, which used to access fishing ponds, has suffered from administrative neglect, resulting in illegal dumping and unsafe conditions. Women, elders, and children cannot safely visit the river edge where they once conducted livelihood, cultural, and recreational activities. Even fishermen risk injury due to sludge accumulation and hazardous waste.

Once safe access is secured, the community aims to raise awareness about the Mithi River's increasing pollution and urbanisation-induced deterioration. They propose to do this by organising boat tours for concerned citizens to spotlight the urban biodiversity and motivate them to take action to conserve the landscape.

The project recognises that the Kolis not only derive their livelihood from these waters but also maintain a profound spiritual relationship with this amphibious marine landscape. By supporting their traditional practices while introducing sustainable innovations, the project aims to create a model for indigenous-led urban ecological restoration that addresses both environmental degradation and community wellbeing.

Project implementation: China
Project development: China

Building in Nature
Hidden underneath a dune by Bohai Bay, Dune Art Museum designed by OPEN Architecture returns to primal and timeless forms of space and directly responds to its ocean front site with a delicate ecosystem.

When asked to design a building along the shore, the architects of OPEN immediately knew this was a rare opportunity. They had been deeply concerned about the careless acts of wiping out dunes for ocean-view real estate developments that frequently happened in China at the time, fully aware of how critical dunes are to the environment.

The decision to build the museum into the dune was therefore deliberate. Because the very existence of the museum, this stretch of dune is ultimately preserved instead of destroyed for real-estate. After the structure was completed, sand was restored atop the building envelope, local shrubs and trees were replanted. The building was opened in October, and by the following June—just one winter and spring later—the plants had fully grown back. The museum had since effectively “disappeared” into a seamless coexistence with nature.

Here, the conscious act of building becomes protection rather than destruction, indicating a different mindset in climate practices and architectural engagement with nature.

Enveloped by sand, the museum’s interconnected, organically shaped galleries draw inspiration from natural caves. A series of cell-like contiguous spaces accommodate differently-sized galleries, a café, and some ancillary spaces. Openings frame views of the shifting sky and sea, allowing visitors to experience the landscape as part of the architecture.

The building’s many skylights, each with a different orientation and size, provide carefully calibrated natural light throughout the year. Its sand-covered roof greatly reduces heat load, while a low-energy, zero-emission ground source heat pump system replaces traditional air conditioning.
About OPEN:

OPEN is an architecture office that collaborates across different disciplines to practice architectural, urban, landscape, and interior design. We also research and develop design strategies in the context of unprecedented challenges facing our generation and beyond.

OPEN was founded by LI Hu and HUANG Wenjing in New York City. It established its Beijing office in 2008. Some major projects by OPEN include: Sun Tower, Shanfeng Academy, Chapel of Sound, Shanghai Qingpu Pinghe International School, UCCA Dune Art Museum, Tank Shanghai, Pingshan Performing Arts Center, Tsinghua Ocean Center, Garden School/Beijing No.4 High School Fangshan Campus, and Gehua Youth and Cultural Center.

Project implementation: China
Project development: China

Nature Into Building
Tank Shanghai Art Center is located on the banks of Huangpu River in the West Bund area, part of a large-scale project to transform the former industrial zone into a vibrant river-front community.

The specific site for Tank Shanghai was once part of an abandoned airport with decommissioned aviation fuel tanks, which underwent a long and thorough decontamination process before redevelopment.

While carefully preserving the oil tanks and transforming them into different art spaces, OPEN “invited” nature to turn the entire site—once paved in concrete with barely any grass—into an urban park open to all. The Art Center is then seamlessly embedded into this newly created urban forest and grassland, without revealing where the architecture starts and ends. It is an art center without boundaries—emblematic of this unique institution’s vision for contemporary art.
Central to the design is the merging of architecture and landscape through a Z-shaped “Super-Surface”—a five-hectare landscaped expanse of trees and grasses which connects the five tanks and integrates the site’s different elements. The Super-Surface provides both aesthetic and practical benefits to its riverside context, which enjoys a 115-meter stretch of shoreline. The lush greenery creates an attractive and urgently needed parkland in a city with just 17.56% green space, contributing to ecological restoration and the return of animal life.

Flanking the south side of the plaza, an “Urban Forest” provides much desired shade and greenery to the urban residents. On the east, a grassy plaza offers open space for leisure and outdoor events, doubling as a standing area for large audiences during festivals.

Programmatically, the varied spatial configurations and flexible design allow the institution to host diverse exhibitions, performances and community activities. Despite the structural challenges of adapting the tanks, the renovation preserves many of their original industrial features, maintaining a dialogue between past and present.
In summary, Tank Shanghai adapted containers of fuel into containers of culture and life, connecting people, art, and nature. It stands as a social equalizer that attracts and generously accommodates people from all walks of life.

About OPEN:
OPEN is an architecture office that collaborates across different disciplines to practice architectural, urban, landscape, and interior design. We also research and develop design strategies in the context of unprecedented challenges facing our generation and beyond.

OPEN was founded by LI Hu and HUANG Wenjing in New York City. It established its Beijing office in 2008. Some major projects by OPEN include: Sun Tower, Shanfeng Academy, Chapel of Sound, Shanghai Qingpu Pinghe International School, UCCA Dune Art Museum, Tank Shanghai, Pingshan Performing Arts Center, Tsinghua Ocean Center, Garden School/Beijing No.4 High School Fangshan Campus, and Gehua Youth and Cultural Center.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

On a planet confronting its limits in the face of extreme climate events, architecture and urban planning are called upon to profoundly rethink their role. More than reflection, it's necessary to develop radical proposals and concrete solutions. It is on this frontier that the city of Rio de Janeiro stands as a living laboratory forging the foundations of a new pact between urban and natural—where citizenship intertwines with the preservation and integration of nature into the urban fabric.

Rio de Janeiro's participation in the 14th Biennale is a celebration of the dialogue between the urban and the natural, resulting in unique and inclusive urban solutions, paving the way for a contemporary Carioca urban tradition. The city presents a portfolio of interventions that translate the Biennale's curatorial axes into reality, demonstrating that it is possible to reconcile climate resilience with social justice. In a multifaceted strategy, Rio continues its mission to reinstate itself as a forest city through urban reforestation manifested at various scales, from the vitality of community gardens and productive backyards to the grandeur of urban parks and the reconnection with its forests.

Extensive, topographically dramatic, and socially diverse, Rio de Janeiro—a world city—embodies the central dilemma of our century: orchestrating a just socio-ecological transition amidst insurmountable complexities. Its complexity, inherent to an urban center of global importance, amplifies tensions and potentialities, demanding operations at multiple scales—from macro to micro—under the imperative of integrating social justice, urban planning, and climate action.

Rio de Janeiro, therefore, is not coming to the Biennial simply to showcase projects, but to share an urban management model that understands the city as an integrated ecosystem. We present a set of solutions that emerge from the urban soil of the city and also from the humid soil of the forest, in the firm conviction that the architecture we need for the future is already being built today, on the hillsides, in the floodplains, and on the asphalt of the state capital.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Piratininga Waterfront Park (POP) represents a milestone in urban planning and environmental management in Brazil, serving as both an urban public park and a living laboratory of sustainability. Its innovative design is based on the adoption of Nature-Based Solutions (NbS), a strategy that combines green infrastructure with ecological restoration to aid in the recovery of Piratininga Lagoon.

To this end, three large constructed wetland systems were implemented, capable of naturally filtering water from the urban basins of the Cafubá River, the Arrozal River, and the Jacaré River. These systems occupy an area of approximately 35,000 m² spread over two linear kilometers along the lagoon. They treat water from the main contributing rivers, as well as surface runoff and drainage from neighborhoods, reducing the input of sediment and pollutants into the water body and promoting the gradual recovery of the lagoon's environmental quality.

Associated with this solution, there is also the restoration of Atlantic Forest connectors in surrounding wetlands, which reinforce ecological connectivity, expand habitats for local fauna, and strengthen ecosystem services provided to the population.
In addition to environmental restoration, the park was also designed as a space for social and cultural integration. The Ecocultural Center, a facility dedicated to environmental education and cultural activities, seeks to raise awareness of the importance of preservation.

The Park also includes cycle paths, piers for fishing and contemplation, leisure areas and sports centers, constituting a multifunctional infrastructure that promotes health, mobility, tourism and quality of life.

To showcase the functioning of constructed wetland systems and other types of NBS applied in the Alfredo Sirkis Piratininga Waterfront Park, the exhibition space will feature an audiovisual station showing documentaries and videos about Piratininga Waterfront Park and the Jacaré River Basin Renaturalization; and virtual reality headsets, offering an immersive experience in POP. A self-explanatory model will also demonstrate how constructed wetlands work.

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 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: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Bianca Cuvello, an architect and urban planner with a degree from the Federal University of Amazonas and a native of Manaus, understands that the urban development of the Amazonas capital is intrinsically conditioned by the natural environment, especially the extensive river basin that characterizes the region. However, rapid urbanization has intensified the phenomenon of peripheralization, creating complex challenges related to social inclusion and access to decent housing. Spatial segregation, in this context, pushes low-income populations to areas where infrastructure is precarious and insufficient.

Given this scenario, amphibious housing emerges as an alternative capable of mitigating these problems, promoting a more balanced integration between residents and floodplain and wetland areas. Amphibious architecture, designed to be built over water, seeks to combine sustainability and technological innovation with construction solutions adapted to the surrounding environment, combining two fundamental structural typologies: stilt housing and floating housing.

This strategy reaffirms the limits and potential imposed by the Amazon's natural constraints, while enabling the occupation of historically neglected and sparsely populated urban spaces. Furthermore, the proposal engages with the city's social and housing issues through design guidelines aligned with the 5 Points for Amazonian Architecture (Cereto, 2024). Therefore, the objective is to reflect on housing solutions that not only respond to Manaus's environmental specificities but also promote the social integration of marginalized populations into the established urban fabric.

Thus, the amphibious housing typology aims to ensure functionality and efficiency, incorporating appropriate equipment and construction systems consistent with local economic constraints, especially in a context marked by scarcity of resources.

Project implementation: China
Project development: China

The China Architecture Exhibition at the 14th São Paulo International Architecture Biennial, Sharing · Intergrowth · Commensality: Designing for an Overheated Planet, marks a rare collective appearance of thirty leading Chinese architects. Each participant brings a new work shaped by the winds of place, the memory of land, and the urgencies of climate. These projects are not declarations of form or displays of personal signature, but rather quiet and meaningful conversations with rivers, with mountains, with neighborhoods, and with people. Taken together.

The curatorial team—Chief Curator Li Cundong and Executive Curator Xiao Wei—has deliberately resisted imposing a single style or narrative. Instead, they allow a chorus of voices to emerge, weaving together traditions, innovations, and visions for the future. Their approach highlights architecture not only as technical production but also as cultural empathy and ecological responsibility.

The exhibition is structured around five threads: Vernacular Resonance, which reinterprets local traditions such as courtyards, timber frames, or village patterns as seeds for grounded futures; Green Innovation, where sustainability is not ornament but origin, integrating renewable energy, biomaterials, and circular practices; Resilience for the Future, proposing adaptive infrastructures and public spaces capable of withstanding floods, droughts, and extremes; The Value of Margins, where innovation arises in peripheries, informal settlements, and ecological frontiers; and Back to Balance, a forward-looking outlook toward the UIA World Congress of Architects 2029 in Beijing.

Complementing these are five additional perspectives: Green Building, advancing ecological balance through low-carbon life-cycle strategies; Urban Regeneration, reactivating dormant urban areas through site-specific interventions that respect history while meeting contemporary needs; Landscape Architecture, reweaving fragmented ecosystems and enhancing climate resilience; Rural Revitalization, creatively transforming traditional settlements into new paradigms of endogenous growth; and Innovation Practices, which break disciplinary boundaries and explore new possibilities at the intersection of digital technology, biomimicry, and social experimentation.

As one of the core exhibitions of this Biennial, the China Architecture Exhibition is less a display of “feats” and more a practice of shared responsibility. It demonstrates how architecture can remain humble yet transformative—anchored in place, attentive to people, and oriented toward a more balanced and sustainable planetary future.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Platina 220, a mixed-use building in Tatuapé, East Zone of São Paulo, and the tallest in the city — at 172 meters high and 50 floors —, is part of the Eixo Platina, an urbanization proposal with the creation of a new centrality, designed by Porte Engenharia in conjunction with Königsberger Vannucchi.

Located across from Shopping Tatuapé, the building combines several uses: shops on the ground floor, a hotel and residential units in the lower third, commercial complexes in the middle, and office buildings in the upper third. This diversity aims to attract businesses to the area and reduce residents' commutes to other areas of the capital.

Platina features a striking volume, with ventilated façade elements in light-colored porcelain. The central prismatic block, with terraces and windows arranged in varying positions, creates an effect of light and shadow, shaping the building as a monolith carved into the landscape. Side blocks in darker tones preserve the verticality and function as buttresses, highlighting the building's perceived support.

The main entrance is on Rua Bom Sucesso, where the main prism "steps" onto the ground floor. In the area surrounding the block, retail spaces create two outdoor areas: tree-lined perimeter sidewalks in the public space and private leisure areas above the stores for the building's users.

To achieve the building potential and urban benefits, all the instruments of the New São Paulo Master Plan of 2014 were used. The result is a building that seeks to requalify the region, with mixed use, active facades and interaction with the street.

Project implementation: Panama
Project development: Panama

Latin American cities continue to grow in population and infrastructure, making sustainable urban planning urgent. Understanding the effects of heat islands and urban microclimates is crucial to formulating policies that promote efficient energy use. In Panama, transportation is the largest energy consumer, and buildings also experience high energy consumption due to the heavy use of air conditioning. Mitigating heat islands through urban planning reduces this demand, improves public health, and stimulates the economy. Furthermore, creating thermal and environmental comfort favors pedestrian traffic, encourages the use of alternative and public transportation, and reduces dependence on automobiles, reducing CO₂ emissions.

The Green Path Panama is an evidence-based urban proposal that seeks to transform mobility and adapt the physical environment to promote walking. The project connects five neighborhoods in Panama City through green corridors, river restoration, and the promotion of active mobility. The urban assessment identified problems such as large blocks and few connected intersections. The proposal aims to restore these areas with public spaces integrated into a multimodal transportation system, building a more connected, healthy, and green city.

The initiative avoids approximately 564 tCO₂/year by planting 5,000 trees, engages 500 residents in active mobility, generates 65,000 additional hours of physical activity per year and removes approximately 150 cars from the streets, promoting a more sustainable, inclusive and resilient city.

Project implementation: Angola
Project development: Angola

Introduction

The city of Luanda, capital of Angola, carries within itself a cultural and historical heritage that positions it as one of the main urban landmarks on the African continent. However, as in many other Latin American and African cities, the process of urban expansion and decentralization has led to the progressive abandonment of its historic core. Rua Rainha Ginga, formerly known as Rua Salvador Correia and Avenida dos Restauradores, is one such space that represents both Luanda's cultural richness and the challenges of its contemporary governance.

Doladob, an architecture, urban planning, and project management firm, has taken an active role in the development and implementation of sociocultural activation and innovation projects. With renowned projects such as Axi Luanda and Naxixi Street, the company has established itself as a creative and transformative platform. This experience led to the proposal for the rehabilitation and reactivation of Rua Rainha Ginga, with a special focus on Praça da Samakaka, considered the model section of the intervention.

The central objective is to transform this vital hub of Luanda into a space that unites identity, innovation, sustainability, and inclusion. The goal is to reverse urban degradation through architectural and urban solutions that empower the local community, improve the quality of life of residents, workers, and visitors, and create new economic, social, and cultural opportunities.

Historical and social context

Rua Rainha Ginga is more than just a thoroughfare. It's the main artery that historically connected the city's administrative center to the downtown commercial district. Today, despite its deteriorating condition, it remains a space of great social, economic, and cultural importance.

In everyday life, the street welcomes street vendors, newspaper vendors, shoe shiners, formal and informal traders, students, businesspeople, public servants, and residents. It is, therefore, a plural space, where different social groups coexist. Despite this diversity, the predominant relationship between them has been solely financial, which limits the creation of a common identity and the exchange of knowledge and experiences.

Deteriorating infrastructure, poor tree cover and lighting, the concentration of waste, and unplanned roads have contributed to social exclusion and the loss of vitality in the area. Even so, relatively stable security, a rich history, public squares, and a strong youth presence are positive factors that open up space for innovative interventions.

First pilots and tests

Before moving to a larger scale, Doladob implemented a pilot subproject on Rua Rainha Ginga. This initial experiment consisted of installing new, stylish counters for the sale of local produce and reorganizing the street vendors.

Intervention proposal

Mobility and sustainability

The intervention aims to transform Rua Rainha Ginga into an example of sustainable mobility. The city needs more pedestrian traffic to stimulate local commerce, increase social interaction, and reduce the negative impacts of road transport. Closing certain streets for pedestrianization is a fundamental step in this process.

Conclusion

The rehabilitation of Rua Rainha Ginga, with an initial focus on Praça da Samakaka, is more than an architectural or urban planning project. It's a movement of social, cultural, and economic transformation for Luanda.

By combining historical identity, urban innovation, and sustainability, the project aims not only to revitalize the physical space, but also to generate new forms of social interaction, economic inclusion, and cultural appreciation.

It is a proposal that balances risks and opportunities, aware of the complexity of the territory, but firm in the conviction that cities can only prosper when their public spaces are designed for people and by the community.

Investing in Rua Rainha Ginga is investing in the future of Luanda: a future of sustainable mobility, social integration, cultural creativity, and economic development.

Project implementation: Italy
Project development: Italy

This work examines the intersection of design, regulation, and embodied carbon in the adaptive reuse of modernist high-rise buildings in Manhattan, focusing on the recent surge of office-to-residential conversions amid rising vacancy rates and climate imperatives.

In 2025, the global office vacancy rate averaged 16,8%, rising in Europe and North America but easing slightly in Asia-Pacific and South America. In the U.S., nearly 30 million m² of office space is projected to become obsolete by 2030. Manhattan—home to over 42 million m² of office stock—has seen vacancy rising from 8% to 12% since the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly 70% of its towers predate 1980 and face both functional and market obsolescence, while the city continues to suffer from a chronic housing shortage.

Since the pandemic, office-to-residential conversions have accelerated globally. In the U.S., as of May 2025, the office-to-residential conversion pipeline totals 7,5 million m² of planned and underway projects across 44 major metropolitan markets—about 1,9% of the national office inventory. The removal of obsolete stock through conversions and demolitions is outpacing new completions, gradually easing vacancy and advancing sustainability goals. In Manhattan, 26 modernist towers have been converted over the past decade, with 18 more underway or planned; by 2024, 1,2 million m² of high-rise buildings from 1960–1990—over 10% of that stock—had been transformed. Many postwar towers present recurring challenges—deep floor plates, non-operable windows, inefficient façades—making adaptation costly and complex, further constrained by local regulation.

Since 2020, New York City has introduced measures to lower barriers and incentivize conversions. Following the Office Adaptive Reuse Task Force’s recommendations (2023), the Department of City Planning is preparing zoning reforms as part of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, coupled with tax abatements for affordable units, aiming for 82.000 new homes in 15 years.

The case of 180 Water Street—originally built in 1971 and converted in 2017—offers a striking example of how much carbon can be saved through adaptive reuse. The building’s original structure, with its materials and construction energy considered, embodied approximately 59 Mt CO₂-eq, a staggering total roughly three times Brazil’s energy-use emissions for 2020. By contrast, reusing that structure required just 10% of the embodied carbon, delivering significant reductions even before factoring in the environmental benefits of avoiding demolition or improving operational efficiency.

This carbon savings isn’t unique to a single building. Across Manhattan’s modernist high-rise office stock (constructed between 1960 and 1990), embodied carbon totals about 14,8 Mt CO₂-eq—a figure equivalent to the annual emissions of almost 10 million cars.
By combining urban-scale quantitative analysis with architectural study, this research frames conversions as both a climate strategy and an urban revitalization tool, capable of preserving embodied energy, reducing emissions, and diversifying the functions of Manhattan’s historic monofunctional districts.

This work was developed by an interdisciplinary team led by Elena Guidetti and Caterina Barioglio, both architects and assistant professors at the Department of Architecture and Design (DAD), Politecnico di Torino, Italy. The group includes Ilaria Tonti, postdoctoral researcher at the same department; Maria Ferrara, assistant professor and researcher at the Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino; Francesca Contrada, associate professor of architecture at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Val de Seine (ENSAPVS), Paris; and Elena Majorana, graphic designer and founder of ZenzeroCreative, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Nestled in the Caatinga scrubland, Casa Catimbau offers a fragmented architecture, organized around the fire, in dialogue with the earth's time and the resident's way of life. Built with rammed earth and reclaimed wood, it embodies a frontier mindset, where architecture and landscape are a continuum.

Context

Located in the municipality of Buíque, in the interior of Pernambuco, the house is located within Catimbau National Park—the second-largest archaeological conservation unit in Brazil and one of the most representative areas of the Caatinga. The terrain, with its flat topography and sandy soil, is part of an open landscape of low vegetation and wide horizons, marked by rock formations and a semiarid climate with both sparse and intense rainfall.

Project

The project draws from this context to propose an architecture in direct dialogue with the territory. Composed of four autonomous blocks organized around a courtyard, the house proposes a decentralized form of living that emphasizes outdoor living. Rammed earth, made from local earth, shapes the walls. Wood, sourced from an old warehouse in the region, structures the light and ventilated roofs.

Casa Catimbau responds to the conditions of the sertão with simple, effective construction solutions that integrate with the surrounding area. Architecture acts as a mediator between climate, soil, and lifestyles—not to tame the landscape, but to coexist with it.

Passive thermal comfort

Rammed earth provides efficient thermal insulation. The fragmented arrangement of the blocks allows for cross-ventilation, while the ventilated roofs facilitate the escape of accumulated hot air.

Water efficiency and reuse

The house operates off public water networks. The entire water cycle is treated locally: an infiltration ditch for the kitchen sink; an evapotranspiration basin for the toilets; and a banana cycle for sinks and drains. These ecological systems promote responsible water use, recycle nutrients, and prevent soil contamination.

Low-impact construction and local empowerment

In addition to using low-carbon materials, the project also activated knowledge. The rammed earth technique was unknown in the region, which led to practical training, promoting workforce autonomy and strengthening the area's construction culture.

More than an efficient home, Casa Pátio is also a learning space. Its architecture is built alongside its surroundings, climate-driven by origin, not by trend.

AzulPitanga

AzulPitanga, founded in 2018, emerged from the partnership of architects André Moraes and Carolina Mapurunga, both graduates of FAU-UFPE. The firm works on architectural projects of various scales. Recognized for its inventiveness, experimentation with traditional construction techniques, and the production of contemporary, indigenous projects, it won the 2021, 2023, and 2024 IAB awards.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

From Drought to Life – A Portrait of Regeneration
By: Alexandre Furcolin Landscaping

In a world where major solutions seem distant, transformation can emerge on accessible scales and deeply rooted in everyday life. It is in this context that Alexandre Furcolin's Sítio emerges, an experimental territory that, over four decades, has established itself as a living laboratory of biodiversity, culture, and reconnection. Located in Joaquim Egídio, a former coffee-growing region in the interior of São Paulo state, the site was acquired at a time when the region was facing the decline of monoculture. The land, marked by ecological depletion, bore the scars of degraded pastures and extensive eucalyptus stands, compromising the water cycle and soil fertility.

The starting point was a close look at the territory's hidden potential. Still in the 1990s, a gradual restoration process began: soil reorganization, water retention, and the introduction of native and fruit-bearing species, first in small areas, then in the nursery that would become the heart of the project. This initially modest space evolved into a living botanical collection, nourished by continuous research and experimentation. There, a repertoire was consolidated that expanded the practice of landscaping, shifting it from its merely aesthetic function to the role of a living organism, a concrete expression of care and reconnection.

In the following decade, the site housed the landscaping firm's headquarters, built with reforested wood, cross-ventilation, and recycled materials. More than a building, the project embodied a gesture: integrating workspace, experimental field, and regenerated territory into a single living organism. The team's constant presence intensified the connection between practice and place, ensuring that each project was imbued with the direct experience of inhabiting a transforming ecosystem.

Today, the site stands as a leading center for ecological landscaping, restoring water cycles, strengthening biodiversity, capturing carbon, creating green infrastructure, and producing technical and sensitive knowledge about the relationship between society and nature. A territory home to over a thousand plant species, a thriving fauna, and practices that combine agroecology, contemplation, and technological innovation. The dialogue between the hoe, the drawing board, and the computer structures the space's philosophy: technology does not replace nature, but helps ensure its permanence.

The video presented at the Biennial condenses this trajectory into contrasting images: a divided land that reveals two possible futures. On one side, the arid silence of a degraded territory; on the other, the vitality regenerated by more than 30 years of work by Alexandre Furcolin and his team. The process is revealed as planning and management: soil reorganization, water retention, vegetation implantation, and the development of an ecosystem capable of sustaining diversity and responding to climate extremes. More than a record, the film proposes a critical reflection: which landscape do we choose to cultivate and inhabit?

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

NHANDEREKO
Simply translated, Nhandereko or Nhanderekó means "way of life of the Guarani people." 'nhande' means "our," and 'reko' means "life," so Nhandereko represents "our life." Nhandereko represents where life is and the relationship of life with all that exists: bodies, space, and the environment. Nhandereko is interconnected with the entire territory, which for the Guarani people represents life, encompassing all living beings: forests, rivers, plants, and animals.

Guarani M'bya Architecture Manual
In 2021, the construction of the new cultural center was documented, and through memories, old photographs, and models, the restoration of what would have been the traditional home of the Guarani-Mbya people in the Tenondé-Porã village in Parelheiros, São Paulo, was documented. Together with builder Joaquim Guarani, leader Jera Poty, and volunteers, materials were collected for the creation of the Guarani-Mbya Architecture Manual. The Guarani-Mbya House is a small, economical structure that truly reflects the Nhandereko, the Guarani "way of life," by positioning itself as the "essentially necessary." Built within the forest, it is also built by the forest, gathering wood and straw available locally and quickly assembled as a shelter that blends into its surroundings, blurring the lines between what is "human" and "natural." Constructed of roundwood, trunks of wood available in the forest, it is roofed with Jussara straw available in the still-preserved territories of São Paulo's Atlantic Forest. The adaptation of materials and construction techniques of traditional houses, whether Guarani or those of another people, from the Xingu to the Upper Rio Negro, is directly connected to the transformations of the forest, many of them resulting from predatory human actions, and the scarcity of traditionally used species. Like much other indigenous knowledge and techniques, construction know-how is intimately linked to the health of the forest, evidencing the symbiotic relationship between "natural and human" and the vital interdependence between them.

Kamayurá Architecture Manual.
As part of the "Ways of Living" workshop-trips, promoted by the Habita-Cidade Platform and the Housing and City Postgraduate Program at Escola da Cidade, a group of teachers and students spent three weeks with the Kamayura people in the Upper Xingu in July 2019, at the Ypawy Village. A partnership between the Kamayura teachers and the Escola da Cidade group led to a survey of the building styles of this sophisticated Xingu ethnic group. Through an initiative by Kamayura leaders and through architect Clara Morgenroth and theater director Cibele Forjaz, a preparatory course for the manual and a workshop-trip were organized with anthropologist Luísa Valentini and architects Anna Julia Dietzsch and Luis Octavio de Faria e Silva (a facilitator for the Habita-Cidade Platform). Named within the scope of the City School of “Ways of Living: Traditional Architectures”, the project resulted in the research and production of the “Kamayurá Architecture Manual” and its annex “The Construction of 'Ok Eté by the Kamayura People”.

Yudja Architecture Manual
The Yudja Architecture Manual was created from the revitalization process of Akatxi, a traditional house of the Yudja people, built communally in 2024, with the guidance of elders, involving young people, women, and children in all stages of the process. The document seeks to record not only the construction techniques—wood selection, straw preparation, and tying methods—but also the ecological knowledge, stories, and symbolic concepts associated with the oral transmission of the Yudja people's traditional house. It is, therefore, a tool for strengthening the memory, autonomy, and continuity of ancestral architectural practices, forming part of a broader network of initiatives that unite Indigenous peoples, architects, artists, and researchers in the preservation and maintenance of traditional knowledge and territories.
The Yudja Architecture Manual is a collective record produced by the Yudja people of the Tuba-Tuba Village (TIX – MT), a project of the Yarikayu Association, in partnership with the Casa Floresta Association, the Socio-Environmental Institute, Xingu Project [UNIFESP], Casa Socio-Environmental Fund, FUNAI and ATIX (Xingu Indigenous Land Association).

Access the manual: https://www.casafloresta.org/manual-da-arquitetura-yudja

Project implementation: Germany, Spain, France, Portugal, Czech Republic and Sweden
Project development: Germany, Spain, France, Portugal, Czech Republic and Sweden

The EUmies Prize, founded in 1988 in Barcelona, is recognized as one of the most important and prestigious architecture awards in the world. It is promoted by the Creative Europe program and organized by the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, celebrating
excellence in architectural works throughout Europe.

The award highlights the contribution of quality architecture to sustainable development and the well-being of citizens.

EUmies 2024
"Society often underestimates the impact that well-designed architecture can have on many levels. Therefore, promoting how architecture operates is an essential part of architectural communication—that is, explaining the multiple forms it can take and how architectural thinking can contribute to solving many complex problems. This is what this selection expresses."

This was one of the reflections made by the members of the EUmies Awards 2024 jury regarding the role of contemporary architecture in our current world and which is manifested through the selection of works presented in this exhibition.

After an intense trip through Europe and many hours of discussion, Frédéric Druot, Martin Braathen, Sala Makumbundu, Adriana Krnáčová, Hrvoje Njiric, Tinatin Gurgenidze and Pippo Ciorra selected the group of 40 works, among which the finalists and winners presented at the 14th International Architecture Biennial of São Paulo stand out.

Winner: Study Pavilion on the campus of the Technical University of Braunschweig
(Braunschweig, Germany)
Gustav Düsing and Max Hackee

Emerging Winner: Gabriel García Márquez Library
(Barcelona, Spain – 2015/2019-2022)
SUMA Architecture

Emerging Finalist: Plaza and Tourist Office
(Piódão, Portugal – 2018/2020-2022)
Branco del Rio

Architecture Finalists:
Renovation of the Convent of San Francisco
(Sainte-Lucie-de-Tallano, France)
Amelia Tavella Architectes

Hage
(Lund, Sweden)
Brendeland & Kristoffersen Architects and Price & Myers (civil and structural engineering)

Reggio School
(Madrid, Spain)
Andres Jaque/Office for Political Innovation

Plato Contemporary Art Gallery
(Ostrava, Czech Republic)
KWK Promes

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: China
Project development: China

“A revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential.” — Henri Lefebvre

The 21st century has revealed the structural limits of growth-driven urbanization. Industrial expansion and continued development have brought environmental degradation, housing shortages, and growing inequality. These challenges are systemic, not temporary.

Future Urban Landscapes is a design studio examining these conditions through the lens of the peri-urban region of Wenzhou, China. The findings highlight how these territories—where factories, warehouses, dormitories, and informal housing intersect—are simultaneously highly productive and socially segregated from the local environment. Migrant workers, part of China's Floating Population of 380 million, sustain industry but remain excluded from various forms of formal housing, services, and civic life, as mediated by the Hukou system.

Work is central to this condition. It structures both the local economy and the multiple communities that care for these landscapes. The periphery makes this fissure visible, between migrant and local, rural and urban citizen, where overcrowded housing and precarious infrastructure coexist within a vital economic activity.

As migration continues to intensify in these regions in the coming decades, these peripheries of arrival will only grow in importance. This exhibition invites a reconsideration of their role—not as neglected zones of production, but as potential hubs in their own right. Places that can be designed for inclusion, resilience, and new forms of collective life in China's urban future.

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.

What if vegetation proliferated in our cities, transforming them into veritable forests rich in flora? What would the resulting urban ecosystems be? The Green Dip, an ongoing research project led by The Why Factory at Delft University of Technology, is a visual manifesto that speculates on greening solutions for cities and imagines architectural strategies for incorporating vegetation into buildings.

Green Dip envisions a global urban forest—from Beijing to Singapore, Dubai, Moscow, Kinshasa, Paris, New York, and São Paulo. It proposes a database of plant species for designers to easily incorporate into their buildings and envisions software to aid this process.

Green Dip takes a global perspective, understanding that different climates provide specific environments for native species to thrive. It presents a method for calculating environmental benefits and estimating the planetary impacts of greening our cities.

Amid the climate emergency, The Green Dip is a manifesto for reintroducing nature into our homes and transforming our relationship with the environment. It demonstrates that agriculture, forestry, and organic production can catalyze alternative approaches to urbanization.

Green Dip is the first part of a trilogy of publications focused on the integration of nature and the city. It will be followed by BiodiverCity, which examines the integration of wildlife into the built environment, and Biotopia, dedicated to designing entirely with nature.

Like all previous publications by The Why Factory, The Green Dip is based on student work—not scientific work. This book is the result of design speculation for educational purposes.

We're running out of time. Regardless of the prepositions we choose, it's time to design with, for, and like nature.

About the authors

Winy Maas
Winy Maas is the Director of The Why Factory and Founding Partner and Principal Architect of MVRDV. He has received international acclaim for his wide range of urban planning and construction projects, across all typologies and scales. At The Why Factory at TU Delft,
Maas pushes the boundaries of established standards to produce solutions that reimagine how we live, work, and play. In addition to his dedicated leadership role at MVRDV and professorships at TU Delft and elsewhere, Maas is widely published, actively engaged in advancing the design profession, and serves on numerous boards and juries.

“I advocate for denser, greener, more attractive and livable cities, with a design approach that focuses on innovative and sustainable user-defined ideas for the built environment, regardless of typology or scale.” – Maas

Javier Arpa Fernández
Javier Arpa Fernández is a professor, researcher, author, and curator of architecture and urbanism. Having completed a Master of Science in Architecture at Delft University of Technology, Javier specializes in the dissemination of architectural and urbanism practice. Javier was the Research and Education Coordinator for The Why Factory and the Curator of Public Programs at the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft. Javier gives public lectures and participates in colloquia worldwide. Javier has been a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a Design Critic at Harvard GSD, an Adjunct Professor at Columbia GSAPP, and a Visiting Professor at ENSA-Belleville and ENSA-Versailles. He was Deputy Editor of Domus Magazine and Senior Editor of the a+t research group. He is a co-author of the a+t series “Density,” “Hybrids,” “Civilities,” “In Common,” and “Strategy,” and the volume “The Public Chance.”
He was curator of the exhibition Paris Habitat, about a century of social housing in Paris, held in 2015 at the Pavillon de l'Arsenal in Paris, and author of the monograph “Paris Habitat: One Hundred Years of City, One Hundred Years of Life”.

Adrien Ravon
Adrien Ravon is an architect and academic. In September 2011, he joined The Why Factory at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft. He has participated in research and education projects, been responsible for the production of digital design tools, and actively collaborated in the public dissemination of ideas about the city of the future. He co-authored publications in The Why Factory's Future Cities Series: Barba, Life in a Fully Adaptable Environment (2015), Copy Paste, the Badass Copy Guide (2017), PoroCity, Opening up Solidity (2018), Le Grand Puzzle, Manifesta 13 Marseille (2020), (w)Ego, Dream Homes in Density (2022).
He has collaborated with numerous international institutions, including ETH (Zurich), KTH (Stockholm), GSAPP (New York), IAAC (Barcelona), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Dutch Design Week (Eindhoven), Manifesta 13 (Marseille) and Mori Art Museum (Tokyo).
Adrien has worked as an architect and consultant for companies in Argentina, France and the Netherlands.

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

Located on the Cocoa Coast, Modular Bahia is nestled between the river and the sea, amidst a coconut grove, near a significant tropical forest reserve. The house utilizes the Modular 5.5 System, which was designed with the climate in mind for humid tropical regions.

In light of climate change and the impact of construction on carbon emissions, the system was developed to combine the advantages of an industrialized product with the use of renewable raw materials. The system uses glulam made from reforested wood, which is assembled on site – the most sustainable construction method for small and medium-sized buildings.

Wood has excellent thermal performance, allowing it to be used in both high and low temperatures. Modular 5.5 features large eaves that protect the spaces from both the sun and heavy rain, and a highly efficient upper frame (between the walls and roof) for permanent cross-ventilation. The modular system is based on modules for bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, studios, laundry rooms, and balconies, which can be combined in countless configurations.

Four essential points of this system stand out:

1. modules adaptable to different topographical situations, climatic conditions and access and view conditions in each location.
2. control over deadlines and costs: modular is not a construction project, it is an assembly;
3. minimization of waste production on site;
4. Optimization of systems with the possibility of using solar panels, storing rainwater for reuse and treating sewage through a domestic biodigester.

The house is organized into three pavilions connected by a wooden deck. Two of them are independent, with bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen; the third is a communal space, with a large kitchen, balcony, and living room. The independent, elevated pavilions blend into the local vegetation and landscape, giving the complex a delicate presence while maintaining the original appearance of the land.

The project also utilizes the balconies as shaded living spaces. The wide eaves of the front facade extend nearly two meters, providing wide openings for controlled sunlight, optimizing natural ventilation, and providing views to the exterior.

Outbuildings, such as the laundry room and water reservoir, adopt elements of traditional architecture with local colors and perforated brick walls, which provide ventilation and shade.

UNA barbara e valentim is an architecture studio based in São Paulo, founded in 2019 by Fernanda Barbara and Fabio Valentim. The studio dedicates its work to architecture projects of various scales and programs, as a way of enhancing natural and urban environments, as well as improving public and private spaces, designed for a better life, both collective and individual.

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: Portugal
Project development: Portugal

The proposal to replace the collective housing blocks in the Bairro D. Leonor neighborhood (1951/1953) represents a turning point in the way we think about and design collective housing in the city of Porto. Housing is essentially "shelter" as a functional possibility, but it cannot neglect its dimension as an open and universal communicational "work." It is necessary to focus on architecture as use and function while simultaneously understanding its grammatical representation as connotation and topology.

The construction of the New D. Leonor Neighborhood (2015-2019) was also an opportunity to deepen and validate participatory methodologies implemented during the rehabilitation operation on Ilha da Bela Vista (2013-2017).

Residents, architects, and social scientists, working together in a collaborative convergence strategy and supported by a determined and motivated developer, were the effective formula for bringing this project to fruition. It should be noted that the project arose from a public tender for a public/private partnership to build a municipal neighborhood, granting construction rights on surplus land to one of the parties. It is within this unique context that the project was organized in the former Bairro D. Leonor neighborhood. The team, organized around the community and the developer, secured the right to land and decent housing for each of the families resisting the political will that imposed relocation on them.

This new operation ensured all residents and families the right to decent housing in the same location and community. Housing was designed with families' needs and expectations in mind.

The proposed model contradicts the morphological models and the hygienist and bureaucratic relocation processes, based on inquiries and rational and bureaucratic regulations, applied by public entities in the housing sector. The only exception is related to the SAAL operations during the revolutionary process that took place in 1974 and 1975.

The program developed and implemented was extensively discussed with the community and the developer, taking into account a minimum housing program defined in regulations by the municipal entity. The flexible nature of the program allowed for considerable freedom of conception and collaborative design with this community. The result was a new neighborhood with a territory connected to the street space, with vertical and horizontal relationships of great visual and social interaction. Residents were housed in homes designed and allocated specifically for them through a participatory process, and public infrastructure is at the service of the community and the city: gardens, sidewalks, free parking areas, and open, welcoming streets for street dwellers. With this architectural and urban solution, we avoided segregation, the duality between insiders and outsiders, and negative or positive gentrification.

Rodrigues, Fernando Matos; Fontes, António Cerejeira; Fontes, André Cerejeira – Magazine “Supernova nº 3” – Dona Leonor Neighborhood Community with Participating Project, pg. 49-51, April 2024

Project implementation: Germany
Project development: Germany

Firmitas, Utilitas and Venustas in Our Times
BY PHILIPP VON MATT, ARCHITECT

Firmitas:
Is it presumptuous, in a place like this, which has witnessed so much destruction, obstruction, and devastation, to dream of the old Vitruvian creed of Firmitas (solidity), Utilitas (usefulness), and Venustas (beauty), that is, the very opposite of what has happened to this city?

With this in mind, we envisioned a home that would serve as a natural place for art and life and their symbiotic experience, much in the spirit of Remy Zaugg's "The Art Museum I Dream of." Dreams are stronger than destruction because they survive in lived memory. Therefore, in this place, we are manifesting a home for our dreams, a lived dream, and a place to preserve our dreams.

Located on the Berlin Wall, in the former East Zone, at the point of tension between West and East, we found a plot of land in the middle of life. Surrounded by prefabricated buildings with residents who belonged to the GDR cadre, Kreuzberg on the other side of the former wall with a predominantly Turkish population, and right between two occupied houses with residents who call themselves autonomous anti-fascists, we, artist Leiko Ikemura and I, decided to build an artist's house.

The location called for a resilient and robust building that could not only withstand the environment but also challenge it. Integrated into this social fabric, we realized our universe by coexisting with a wide variety of cultural circles that can be found daily in the nearby supermarket. East German political figures with captain's caps in their shopping carts share the space with punks with mohawk haircuts, and Islamic women in hijabs and bearded men coexist in a multilayered population diversity.

It is the base for our activities worldwide and offers inspiration, contemplation and security in the bustling city of Berlin.

Utilitas
Oikonomos, the "house rule," is what we now call sustainability—implementing what is economically necessary in an environmentally sound way. Our benchmark was to achieve this not only within the realm of possibility, but in a way that would inspire others.

To avoid disproportionate costs and effort, we decided not to build a basement on the water table. The building's mass, made of mineral building materials and brick, is inexpensive, durable, recyclable, and stores energy.

The room temperature is maintained warm in winter by natural influences, such as solar radiation—passive solar energy—and by actively utilizing the sun through rooftop collectors for heating and hot water. In summer, the building is cooled by the stone mass of the structure, providing ideal conditions for quiet work in the cool rooms.

Venustas
All materials are left in their natural state, allowing the material to communicate with the space and the people within it. Siberian larch wood is used for the windows and frames, filling the atmosphere with warmth.

Plaster, or untreated plaster surfaces, give the rooms character, while concrete floors and ceilings create an archaic sense of space. Visitors are welcomed into a stone hall above which a spiral stone staircase rises elastically upward.

The encounter between the observer and the architectural soul of the house creates Venustas, the perception of beauty, in the mind and memory.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

BUILDING AS A CONNECTION – WOODEN STRUCTURE AS AN ARCHITECTURAL EXPRESSION

Currently, the IAU is housed in a two-story building constructed in 2008. The first, consisting of three floors, houses administrative functions, research and faculty offices, and support spaces (we will call it the Administrative Block); and another ground-floor building, which currently houses the five teaching studios. There is also a metal-framed roof connecting the two buildings, known by the nickname "postão."

The Renovation and Expansion project includes a series of partial interventions in the existing buildings and the construction of a new building (Teaching Block), which will house the design studios, classrooms, auditorium and support spaces.

During the project development process, we were aware that we were designing spaces for a School of Architecture. Therefore, the design choices, the development of structural systems, the selection of materials, and their technical performance are part of the architectural discourse and are presented to provide students with a living experience of construction. Therefore, the building itself is envisioned as a support for concepts developed in the classrooms and studios. Throughout the process, presentations were given to IAU students, faculty, and staff, and discussions with the community also informed the choices presented here.

To accommodate the IAU's program, the complex will consist of three independent buildings, connected by walkways and stairs. The idea is that the existing buildings and the new construction, while formally and aesthetically distinct, form a single, integrated ensemble, in which the spaces between them also acquire program and meaning, such as garden areas, communal areas, or contemplation areas.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

(RE)PROGRAM AND (RE)CONSTRUCT THE CROSSINGS OVER THE RIVERS OF SÃO PAULO

The Erika Sallum Footbridge project began with a proposal submitted in 2014, responding to a call from the São Paulo City Hall within the Arco Tietê Urban Perimeter. We chose to study urban crossings over rivers and identified striking social, economic, and cultural inequalities between the riverbanks. This situation is exacerbated by the scarcity of well-located bridges that prioritize private vehicles and neglect pedestrians and cyclists. At the time, of the 62 crossings over the Pinheiros and Tietê rivers, none were dedicated to active mobility—a worrying situation in a city where a third of the population commutes on foot.

Our proposal was selected, creating São Paulo's first cycle walkway, connecting the dense and popular neighborhoods of Butantã and Pinheiros. From the outset, we sought to ensure that the bridge's headlands would act as activating elements of public space, connecting public transportation, sidewalks, and cycle paths. We prioritized safe and comfortable access that would encourage daily use of the crossing. The walkway was designed as a wide, pleasant, and contemplative walkway, offering privileged views of the city, the mountains, and Jaraguá Peak.

The structure features a central access point that connects directly to the Marginal Pinheiros bike path, extending its use on weekends and for leisure activities. Because it's located in a high-traffic area, the construction used prefabricated elements: a main metal truss and a concrete platform. The initial sections were cast in situ on the flowerbeds, while the sections over the river and avenues were divided into nine metal sections, hoisted overnight, and precisely positioned on concrete pillars.

The rapid appropriation of the footbridge by the population demonstrates the transformative potential of well-planned urban infrastructure. More than just a crossing, it has become a symbol of the importance of public investment in active mobility and the improvement of urban spaces, promoting more sustainable modes of transportation and strengthening collective life in cities.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

AMAZON FACE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH BASE – Amazonas, Brazil

Located 80 km from Manaus, this vertically designed scientific research base adopts concepts of passive sustainability. The living areas, with varying heights, minimize deforestation and respect the surrounding forest, providing connections with the forest at various heights.

With a prefabricated structure produced in Manaus, the clean construction will generate little waste. The minimal foundation minimized impact on the soil and tree roots, preserving the integrity of the forest.

The brushed and polished aluminum reflects the vegetation, subtly blending the house into the trees. The project's rotation allows for an alternation between indoor and outdoor spaces, fostering social interaction and a unique experience with nature.

—

AMAZON FACE RESEARCH STATION – Amazonas, Brazil

Located 80 km from Manaus, this vertically designed scientific base embraces passive sustainability concepts. The communal areas, with varying heights, minimize deforestation and respect the surrounding forest.

With a prefabricated structure produced in Manaus, the construction will be clean and generate minimal waste. The minimal foundation impacts the soil and tree roots, preserving the integrity of the untouched forest.

The brushed and polished aluminum reflects the vegetation, subtly blending the house among the trees. The rotation of the design allows for an alternation between internal and external spaces, fostering social interaction and a unique experience with nature.

—

Client: AMAZON FACE Project (INPA (National Institute of Amazon Research) + UNICAMP)
Scale: 825 m2
Year: 2023 – now
Architecture:
TROOST + PESSOA Architects – Laurent Troost, Victor Pessoa, Mitzi Sa Motta, Roney Holanda
Images: FlywithMob
Status: In development

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil, Italy

The project is the result of a design process closely shared between the client and architects, aimed at creating an architectural structure capable of embodying the Franciscan charisma, founded on prayer and hospitality, while simultaneously responding to the challenges posed by Salvador's tropical climate. The project stems from the rules that characterize monastic life—prayer, work, and sharing—and reinterprets the classic convent typology, traditionally introverted and organized around a single cloister, fragmenting the buildings and articulating the complex into five green courtyards. Thus, each building establishes a direct relationship with the open space, taking advantage of the natural ventilation generated by the wind constantly blowing off the ocean.

The autonomous and functionally distinct buildings are united under large roofs that perform a dual symbolic and bioclimatic function. Elevated above the building envelope, they facilitate the flow of hot air and contribute to the comfort of the spaces. Sunshades, permeable walls, and openable pivoting panels allow cross-ventilation, reducing the need for mechanical cooling systems.

The tectonics of the material becomes a central element of the project. The wood weaves are sometimes used as a load-bearing structure, sometimes as a closure or bioclimatic element, giving the complex a unified character while simultaneously differentiating the buildings. The wood filters, protects, and structures the space, alternating transparency and opacity according to function and location.

Each building preserves its own identity within a unitary structure. The church is conceived as a large three-dimensional latticework that creates a natural cross on the back wall: a symbol and fulcrum of the liturgical space. The refectory, permeable and flexible, is open to the community and can also host collective events. The library, suspended on wooden pillars and clad in translucent polycarbonate, transforms into a luminous lantern at night. The barracks, made of prefabricated reinforced concrete and surrounded by a wooden exoskeleton, house the cells and ensure shade and cross-ventilation.

The entire complex combines constructive simplicity, passive strategies, and low-tech solutions with contemporary technologies such as photovoltaic panels and rainwater harvesting, achieving a high degree of energy autonomy. The result is a resilient architecture, rooted in the context, that doesn't pursue innovation as an end in itself, but rather draws on established knowledge capable of responding to the climate, resources, and rhythms of the community. An architecture that looks to the vernacular, not to imitate it, but to understand its profound logic and project it into the present with conscious design choices.

Mixture

Mixtura is a Rome-based architecture studio founded by architects Maria Grazia Prencipe and Cesare Querci. The studio explores contemporary space in its formal, social, and aesthetic dimensions, adopting an approach grounded in an understanding of the specificities of the contexts in which it operates.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

On the eve of its centennial, the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) embarks on a new phase of university expansion, guided by planning guidelines and perspectives aligned with contemporary challenges. The plan for a new campus on a farm that represents a green oasis for the city of Pedro Leopoldo, in the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Region, is being developed. The Pedro Leopoldo Model Farm Master Plan is guided by the principle of minimal intervention and conscious use of the land and its resources, articulated around the duality of urbanity and sustainability.

This new campus, proposed as an inter- and transdisciplinary platform to address major contemporary issues, is based on an analysis of the territory's physical, environmental, landscape, historical, and cultural structures, recognizing and valuing three notable landscapes: the remaining large trees, the agro-pastoral structures connected to watercourses, and the architectural remains of historical and cultural significance, given that it is a farm with approximately 100 years of occupation. To ensure maximum preservation while simultaneously establishing an initial structure to support university activities, conventional urbanization is avoided and a linear, elevated building is proposed that articulates and integrates the farm's fragments into a spatial design of condensed urbanity that combines architecture, infrastructure, and landscape. Recognizing the multi-scale complexity of the territory and engaging with the urban-rural interface in which the site is located, the Plan, more than defining uses, seeks to establish favorable conditions for a still unpredictable future occupation. In its symbolic and practical dimensions, this project seeks to represent the embodiment of a new paradigm for teaching, research, and outreach spaces: an open, green, and transdisciplinary campus, whose occupation supports practices of coexistence and production based on reconciliation with nature. Pedro Leopoldo's sustainable and advanced Green Campus, therefore, reaffirms the University's role as an agent of transformation, illuminating new modes of occupation that are kinder, more inclusive, qualified, articulate, and conscious.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Built in 1988 to house the activities of the Postgraduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism at UFBA (PPG-AU), the Iansã Module of the Faculty of Architecture at UFBA (FAUFBA) followed the model of the two-story schools in reinforced mortar designed by the architect João Filgueiras Lima, Lelé, for Salvador, within the scope of the Community Equipment Factory (FAEC).

In addition to the characteristic structure of reinforced mortar beams and pillars, it has special frames and other unique values.

In the early 2010s, it faced more acute difficulties in carrying out its maintenance, expansion and renovation, due to the construction system outside the production line, suffering a gradual emptying.

Maintenance and research actions on the building have been carried out since 2019, together with the recognition of the original FAEC forms carried out with DESAL, a process that involved the mobilization of the technical staff of FAUFBA and the Superintendence of Environment and Infrastructure of UFBA (SUMAI) and the Pro-Rectory of Research and Postgraduate Studies (PRPPG/UFBA).

Along with maintenance actions, damage and pathological diagnosis activities were carried out, as well as studies of construction systems, through research projects by professors and students (FABER and Project, City and Memory groups).

The project aimed to transform the Iansã Module into the Construction Laboratory and Experimental Site of the Faculty of Architecture of UFBA, an experimental space with a multi-user character to meet the demands of undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

Its reuse included adaptations for the installation of the School's carpentry and metalwork shop, and was made possible by the resumption of the manufacture of reinforced mortar parts for the building's roofing system by DESAL, based on the recovery of the original metal forms, found after a joint effort by its technical team and FAUFBA professors.

The intervention replaced roof beams, tiles, and sheds, restoring the building's rainwater drainage capacity, as well as improving airflow and ventilation by increasing the number of sheds and removing partitions. Other spatial and construction interventions were carried out to repair defective reinforced mortar elements, modernize general facilities, and rearrange the previously subdivided spaces into rooms capable of housing educational activities involving constructive experimentation.

The expectation for the future is that the construction laboratory and experimental site can contribute to strengthening teaching in the field of construction within the new architecture and urban planning course, being a bridge for extension interactions at FAUFBA and serving as an example of recovery and conservation of the work of João Filgueiras Lima, Lelé.

Project: Faculty of Architecture of UFBA and SUMAI/UFBA
New reinforced mortar pieces: DESAL – Salvador
Build: PC Best
images 01 and 02 - Paula Mussi, 03 - Sergio Ekerman

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Jorge Machado Moreira Building (JMM), designed in 1957 and inaugurated in 1961 as the headquarters of the then National Faculty of Architecture, is one of the most important examples of modern Brazilian architecture, having won an award at the 4th São Paulo International Biennial that same year. Throughout its history, the building has undergone several transformations resulting from successive occupations and lack of adequate maintenance, compromising both its architectural integrity and its functional performance. The 2016 fire, which occurred on the eighth floor, intensified this process of degradation, causing structural damage and the isolation of significant areas of the building.

Given this situation, the JMM's recovery has been slow and gradual, marked by initiatives that combine institutional resilience and low-cost solutions. One example is the reoccupation of the 8th floor by the School of Fine Arts, following the closure of the Pamplonao studio, in a collaborative effort with the FAU. The proposal, considered a pilot project, is based on the reuse of existing materials, the reversibility of interventions, and the pursuit of low-cost renovations.

In April 2022, renovations began on the hall located in Block B of the building. The space, which had served as a ceremony room and the headquarters of the Dom João VI Museum throughout its history, had been closed for almost two decades until it was designated as the EBA-FAU-IPPUR Integrated Library, in line with Jorge Machado Moreira's original program, which was never fully implemented.

The initial inspection revealed its dilapidated state, but the original design's sectoral clarity, open floor plan, and structural modulation supported the decision to convert it into a library. The renovation, conducted under severe budget constraints, adopted austerity criteria, maintaining existing elements whenever possible and reinterpreting others in more accessible materials, such as granite for the floor and alveolar polycarbonate for the ceiling.

The result preserves the compositional simplicity and modern character of the hall, now equipped to house collections, consultation, and study. In July 2024, for the first time since the JMM's inauguration, a full library began operating on site, housing one of the largest collections in Latin America in Architecture, Urbanism, Visual Arts, and Design.

These recent initiatives are part of the FAU Project, which treats the building itself as a field of research and practice, articulating heritage conservation, sustainability, and teaching. In this context, the Reuse Laboratory, a subject in the FAU UFRJ advanced cycle, explores the reuse of materials and the disassembly and adaptation of components as a pedagogical exercise, connecting with the FAU Project. Thus, the JMM not only regains its institutional function but also reaffirms its role as a teaching instrument, a laboratory for modern architecture, and a space for experimentation in sustainability.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

As in a collection, where objects are selected and preserved, the fragments of an existing construction—concrete, steel, aluminum, glass—are preserved and reassembled. The ordered form is dissolved to be reworked from its rubble. In this rearrangement, the collected fractions of matter leap from what was once merely opacity, becoming sparks revealed by light—by its reflections and its openings.

The collection of fragments is stacked on white concrete slabs, delimiting the garden like a microcosm. Within it, a suspended enclosure of the same fragments forms another space, housing the office, gallery, and suite.

A staircase, a wooden pillar, and a work of art support the structure that suspends the enclosure amidst the garden. Wooden and steel slabs and beams form the floors and serve as support for the façade elements. The balance of the complex is achieved by a precise interplay of irregularly distributed weights and traction. Above this, two horizontal planes form a small pavilion, which straddles the virtual boundary between the new and the existing.

Organic forms interact with the amorphous nature of the light, creating diaphanous volumes that pierce the floors and organize the internal space of the new proposal.

Transparent and atmospheric, these bodies of light bring the presence of the outdoors inside, with the full oscillating spectrum of their hues. Singularly, they seem to disorient the perception of interior and exterior, confusing built and unbuilt, and rendering the experience of inhabiting a garden latent. An essential counterpoint to the house next door—a 2000s renovation by Ruy Ohtake.

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: Paraguay
Project development: Paraguay

“Being original consists of returning to the origin.” Antonio Gaudí
Technical Memory – Descriptive
The section in question represents a unique case in the city of Asunción, due to the intersection generated between two situations that currently favor the democratic appropriation of public space:

High pedestrian flow – There is a large number of people on foot, as the block is home to shops and services that remain open for most of the day, every day.
Presence of cycle path – Located on one of the main roads of the AMA (Metropolitan Area of Asunción) cycle path network.
Based on this condition, criteria are established for the design of public spaces in this part of the city, aiming to serve as a reference for similar cases. These criteria encompass road, environmental, and infrastructure concepts, to improve public spaces for the benefit of all users.
Considering that the street in question has municipal approval for use “exclusively for pedestrian and cyclist traffic” (Res. 948/2023), the objective is to serve the following functions:

Integrate the cycle path into the pedestrian space.
Mitigate the presence of rainwater.
Improve environmental quality with vegetation.
Ensure universal accessibility.
Ensure access to emergency vehicles.
To achieve these objectives, the elements that make up the public space are described: single platform, cycle path section/speed reducer and urban green infrastructure system.

Single Platform
The main objective is to return public space to people, prioritizing pedestrians so they can exercise their rights in a dignified, inclusive, and safe manner.

A single, continuous, integrated level of sidewalk and roadway is defined, unifying the corners with ramps with a minimum slope of 20%. This surface allows the passage of emergency vehicles, as there are no fixed obstacles to impede it.

The street, which normally dedicates 65% of its width to vehicle traffic and only 35% to pedestrians, is now almost entirely dedicated to human use, incorporating:

Podotactile surface (guides and alerts) and accessibility ramps.
Informative and precautionary signs on street corners.
Linear grates for rainwater drainage, replacing gutters.
Spaces for use by gas station attendants.
Draining gardens for vegetation and rainwater control.
Tree cradles.
Children's playgrounds.
Banks.
Trash cans.
Bicycle parking.
Water station.
Public lighting.
12% is reserved for the cycle path route, the implementation of which is justified below.
Cycle path speed reducer
Due to the high traffic volume and the “square” or “urban garden” nature of the block, cyclists must reduce their speed from around 20 km/h to a maximum of 10 km/h, and may dismount when necessary.

In this section of Alberto de Souza Street, the bike path switches sides: from Cruz del Chaco Street to the West, it's on the North side; from Defensores del Chaco Street onwards, it's on the South side. To reduce speed and smooth the transition, a winding route is proposed, with pre-signaling, encouraging cyclists to pedal cautiously and masking the change of sides.

This sinuosity breaks the directionality and transforms the place into a “natural passage”, where haste gives way to rest, without impeding the crossing.

Urban Green Infrastructure – SUDS ASU1
(Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems)
In addition to returning space to pedestrians, as proposed by the "single platform," the goal is to restore the land's capacity for harmony with people. Strategies include:

Reduction of ambient temperature by reducing the number of asphalted or cemented surfaces and increasing green or less reflective areas.
Highly permeable surfaces, allowing water infiltration and vegetation development.
Installation of draining gardens distributed throughout the block, each measuring approximately 10 m², by removing the asphalt and excavating 1.50 m, filled with stone material for controlled infiltration, protected by a drainage blanket and crimped walls (infiltration well type).

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

Coming soon.

Project implementation: Germany
Project development: Germany

ATREEUM Office Building – A work oasis in Frankfurt's Ostend district
The Atreeum office building on Hanauer Landstrasse in Frankfurt is located in a historic commercial area with a perimeter block density typical of exposed brick buildings. The goal is for the new office building to emerge from its surroundings, integrating contextually while simultaneously creating a sustainable and future-proof work environment through a new structure that integrates nature into the living and working space.

The varying heights of the surrounding buildings are incorporated through differentiated stepped heights. This gives the sculptural structure a stepped height development that creates urban high points at the corners and simultaneously allows for optimized lighting of the courtyards. These courtyards are connected to the urban space by large two-story passageways.

The Atreeum's outer skin consists of a clinker facade with a minimalist slatted structure that envelops and protects the building. Inside, the volume dissolves into horizontal layers. The facade is glazed, and numerous balconies and terraces face the interior green spaces, allowing for the use of these landscaped areas.

In this sense, these internal green courtyards, balconies, and terraces form the building's significant heart. The terraces offer special recreation areas with pavilions and workspaces surrounded by greenery.

Using nature as a building material transforms even an ordinary construction project (in this case, an office building) in a primarily industrial and commercial location into a green oasis where people can work. Atreeum blends a dense urban setting with an innovative interpretation of traditional typologies.

The thrilling tension between the compact protective envelope and the green world within, which brings to mind associations with the atrium houses of Ancient Rome and Moroccan riads, crucially links the two poles of civilization and the environment.

Green courtyards, balconies, and terraces create an optimized microclimate within the building and offer significant potential for water retention and storage. At the same time, this spatial structure provides countless opportunities for social gatherings and new worlds of work.
In this way, this building can make a contribution to sustainable architecture. The result is a green workplace oasis in an urban context.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Mananciais Program is a public policy for integrated urbanization aimed at São Paulo's watershed areas, focusing on the Guarapiranga and Billings river basins. Its origins date back to the 1990s, when the Guarapiranga Program was created, a pioneering landmark of socio-environmental intervention in the city. Over three decades, the initiative has evolved to encompass new territories and methodologies, consolidating its position as a benchmark in the reconciliation of urbanization and environmental preservation.

Conceived by Elisabete França, an architect and urban planner recognized for her work in housing policies and urban renewal, the Program gained a new institutional structure in 2021 with the creation of the Mananciais Program Executive Secretariat. Elisabete served as the first executive secretary (2021–2024), leading the resumption of Phase 3 and structuring integrated action across different areas of the City Hall. Beginning in 2024, the program was led by Maria Teresa Fedeli, who maintains the program's intersectoral strategy and reinforces its social and community dimension.

The Executive Secretariat has a multidisciplinary team, mostly composed of young women, who work directly on planning, coordinating, and monitoring the projects. This composition gives the Program an innovative perspective, sensitive to issues of gender, social inclusion, and territorial equity.

The Phase 3 strategy combines sanitation, drainage, containment, paving, and housing projects with social, cultural, and environmental initiatives that strengthen urban resilience and climate justice. One of the distinguishing features is the adoption of Nature-Based Solutions such as rain gardens, bioswales, retention ponds, and river parks, which integrate urban drainage and environmental preservation into the city's design.

The Program also promotes the implementation of public facilities—Basic Health Units, Early Childhood Education Centers, TEIA Spaces, libraries, sports and cultural centers—by establishing intersectoral partnerships with various departments. These facilities serve as social anchors, bringing essential services closer to the population and strengthening community ties.

Social participation is a structuring axis: workshops, listening sessions, collective plantings, and cultural activities bring residents closer to the urban transformation process, fostering a sense of belonging and shared responsibility for the territory. Emblematic experiences, such as the urbanization of Jardim da União, demonstrate how a set of interventions can promote dignity, integration, and new opportunities for historically vulnerable communities.

More than just construction projects, Phase 3 represents an urban and environmental pact that recognizes the interdependence between cities and nature. By promoting integrated and sustainable interventions, the Program reinforces that quality urbanization is also a strategy for protecting water sources, reducing inequalities, and strengthening climate resilience.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

This project was developed for the Amélias of the Amazon. This community, which extracts andiroba and Amazonian spices, is located in the Tapajós National Forest (FLONA) in the state of Pará. Its name was intended to redefine "the Amélia women," which in the last century was the name given to women who dedicated themselves exclusively to caring for the home. Thus, the Amélias of the Amazon represent the entrepreneurship and protagonism of Amazonian women. Developed in partnership by architects Tales and Taís Kamel, from the Kamel Arquitetura firm, and architect Matheus Vieira. Located in the Tapajós National Forest, in the heart of the Amazon, it combines contemporary architecture, sustainability, and innovation, creating a laboratory in harmony with the forest. The idea stemmed from a contemporary Amazonian architecture project, using wood as a guiding material, readily available in the region. We could use traditional forest labor and construction methods to translate vernacular architecture with low-carbon construction, adapted to the local, hot, and humid Amazon climate. Through the use of shading elements, rich in details characteristic of local architecture, the project highlights the importance of traditional peoples' knowledge. The project strengthens local communities, promoting the development of a sustainable bioeconomy, and extolling the richness of contemporary Amazonian architecture, in harmony with and respect for nature. The forest resists, the forest pulses, the forest lives.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The collaboration between Metro Arquitetos and Paulo Mendes da Rocha on the design of a 900m² single-family home, used as the basis for this proposal, marks the first year of the 21st century. The climate emergency that the population will collectively face in the next century is an economic fact, and the intervention carried out at Casa AP, located in Jardim Europa, São Paulo, envisions alternatives for collective housing and social justice, under the reversal of a centuries-old logic.

The desire of the century is inversion. To build less, to inhabit what is already built better. Workers can be close to work. The drive becomes a walking route. Approximately 900m² of land occupied by a single family can be used by several.
The workplace becomes a leisure space. Mobilize energy, construction, and design resources that are less burdensome to the planet. Collectivize goods and spaces.

A century can transform social constructs regarding the dynamics of housing and domestic use. Given the changes in perceptions of morality, the division of labor, and the relationship between public, private, and intimate that a hundred years encompass, themes such as the overlapping of spaces, their collectivization, and forms of maintenance are addressed in architectural plans.

On a 900m² lot in Jardim Europa, measuring thirty meters by thirty meters, a single family of four lives in a perfectly square layout. Also square is the layout of the social housing unit designed for CECAP Guarulhos by architects João Batista Villanova Artigas, Fábio Penteado, and Paulo Mendes da Rocha in 1972. It is more than nine times smaller in square footage than CASA AP, for the same number of residents. On a lot in an upscale neighborhood, the elite housing system uses large square footage and low-density occupancy.
A project is a wish.
The desire to reverse how things are now.

In this sense, the project proposal, which is an essay that envisions alternative futures on a planet and in a country marked by income inequality and, consequently, discrepancies in access to the right to the city, social and climate justice.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Formed in 2008, the Fresta Group is comprised of four architects and a sociologist [Anita Freire, Carolina Sacconi, Luan Carone, Otávio Sasseron, and Tais Freire], working on architectural and sociocultural projects. The final product is architecture, and for this to materialize, there is always interdisciplinary research and engagement through participatory processes with the local community for which the project will be intended. Just like in the projects developed for the communities of Heliópolis (SP), Rio Pequeno (SP), the Guarani and Tupi peoples of the Tenondé Porã Indigenous Land (SP), the Tupiniquim Guarani Indigenous Land (ES), the fishing communities of the Canavieiras RESEX (BA), Novo Airão (AM) or Marujá, Ilha do Cardoso (SP), the Fresta Group seeks a new perspective on the existing, seeks to channel the potential of its context to then materialize in architecture that initial raw material: the identity of its place and its inhabitants, and thus reveal and formalize its culture in buildings.

The projects in the Tupiniquim Guarani Indigenous Land, in the municipality of Aracruz, in the north of the state of Espírito Santo, were developed based on technical consultancy work and architectural projects, drawn up within the scope of a Basic Environmental Plan.
Through participatory processes conducted in seven Indigenous villages—three of the Tupiniquim and four of the Guarani Mbya—programs for developing architectural projects were agreed upon. The goal was to better understand the architecture and culture of each community, seeking to gain a field-based understanding of their housing styles, uses, needs, and overall social and environmental context.

Thus, through participatory workshops, four projects were developed for the Guarani people: housing in the Piraqueaçu village, a community kitchen in the Olho D'Água village, a community center in the Três Palmeiras village, a natural pharmacy in the Boa Esperança village, and four projects for the Tupiniquim people: an industrial kitchen in the Areal village, an industrial kitchen in the Irajá village, and finally, a women's house and an agricultural shed in the Pau Brasil village. It is important to emphasize that in these projects, the materials, uses, needs, and eventually the forms and spatial distributions were discussed and decided by the Indigenous people themselves.

The goal of the projects was to design buildings that met the proposed uses and respected the culture of each community. The use of traditional techniques and materials, as well as low construction and maintenance costs, were also a constant concern throughout the development of the projects. All buildings adopted sustainable construction systems with low environmental impact and were based on the premise of using ecological sewage treatment systems (banana circles for graywater and evapotranspiration basins for blackwater).

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The landscapes of Mẽbêngôkre villages are undergoing transformation, as anthropologists have recorded over the last century. In 2015, the architects at Estúdio Guanabara were invited to address this dynamic in response to the demand for new non-indigenous homes in 21 Mẽbêngôkre villages. The development of these new kikré—houses, in the language of the Mẽbêngôkre—continued until 2018. During this process, an extensive survey of several villages was conducted, revealing not only the different layouts of the settlements but also the diversity of their constructions: walls of wattle and daub, wood, or masonry, and roofs of straw, zinc, or ceramic.

In the years following the Kikré Project, other initiatives were developed: the Casa do Pajé (Shaman's House), a new building for an ancestral practice, shamanism; and the Casa de Turismo (Tourism House), an ancestral form reinterpreted for a new practice. These experiences have raised questions about the preservation of building traditions, environmental impact, and the adoption of techniques external to Mẽbêngôkre culture. They also prompt reflections on architectural design methodologies in indigenous contexts and, above all, on the autonomy of these people in the construction of their own spaces. By displacing ideas of tradition and cultural identity as something fixed in the past, the Mẽbêngôkre reveal the dynamic dimension of their culture, updating, inventing, and reinventing their living spaces.

This presentation is part of an ongoing doctoral research project at PROURB-FAU/UFRJ, carried out by Luísa Bogossian.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

The Itaqui Innovation District is a project that combines innovation, education, and entrepreneurship with environmental preservation. Unlike a traditional urban district, the project is anchored in the region's lush natural environment: rivers, forests, and wildlife are protagonists, more than just scenery. Approximately 90% of the total area will be preserved, creating a space where the natural landscape not only shapes the environment but also underpins the ethics of teaching, research, and business.

Located on the edge of the site, the architectural complex was designed to minimize impacts and allow for the regeneration of native forest. This strategy simultaneously ensures integration with the urban environment and functional access to neighboring cities, without compromising the preservation area. Circulation between the blocks occurs via external roads, reducing pressure on internal ecosystems.

The district's program is organized into three main areas: the Academic and Business Center, focused on academic training, research, and student housing; the Hospitality Center, with training, lodging, and community spaces; and the Leadership and Business Center, dedicated to entrepreneurship, technological innovation, and new business incubation. In addition to these centers, the project includes common support areas such as a library, laboratories, restaurants, and community spaces.

The buildings were designed with respect for the topography and adopting sustainable solutions. The volumes are laid out horizontally, taking advantage of existing clearings and avoiding complex vertical constructions. Terraces, overhangs, and open areas ensure thermal comfort, integration with the landscape, and spaces for socializing. The strategically distributed homes directly connect with the forest, creating an immersive experience for students, researchers, and entrepreneurs.

Mobility between blocks prioritizes sustainable and low-impact modes: bike paths, shaded walkways, electric scooters, and slope-adapted routes. This infrastructure ensures accessibility, safety, and efficiency in daily commuting.

More than just a physical space, Itaqui aims to be a model for the future. The masterplan reflects an ethical commitment to social inclusion and environmental responsibility, fostering an environment where innovation, education, and sustainability go hand in hand. The district was created as a hub capable of generating knowledge, leadership, and solutions to contemporary challenges, planting the seed of a world more integrated between nature, society, and technology.

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: China
Project development: China

Rapid urbanization is undoubtedly a double-edged sword. While it brings economic and demographic dividends, the excessive pace of spatial development and population growth has led to severe land shortages. Population growth has overwhelmed public infrastructure and support systems, creating significant imbalances. Issues such as energy and water shortages, coupled with overburdened environmental capacity, directly impact the quality of public life and the city's sustainable future.

This exhibition presents five representative, research-driven design projects by NODE Architecture & Urbanism over the past few years in Shenzhen. The aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of NODE's "non-typical" creative practice in urban renewal and infrastructure publicization, emphasizing the ontological exploration of architecture. Additionally, the exhibition includes a research project by the Greater Bay Area Innovation Design Lab titled "Water and Urbanization: The Case of Shenzhen," which addresses issues related to land, water infrastructure, and the interconnection of public spaces. This project offers both a systematic reflection on water environments at regional and urban scales and design perspectives for future solutions to related crises.

Doreen Heng LIU, Founder and Principal of NODE Architecture & Urbanism (NODE), holds a Chartered Architectural Diploma from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA); a Doctor of Design from Harvard University; and is a Fellow of the Architectural Society of China. LIU and her studio NODE are based in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, and have been pursuing diverse architectural and urban design practices in the PRD and the wider region for years. Since September 2020, she has been appointed a Full Professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Shenzhen University and Director of the Greater Bay Area Innovation Design Lab.

NODE Architecture & Urbanism was established in 2004. As one of the most influential independent architectural practices in southern China, it has received widespread attention at home and abroad. Focusing on urban space and public life, it insists on ontological research and practice, pursues innovation based on rigorous pragmatism, and explores the inherent logic of architectural concepts regarding openness and compatibility. Through interdisciplinary interaction and stimulation, the studio maintains its forward-looking and experimental nature in architectural design practice.

Shenzhen University The Greater Bay Area Innovation Design Lab was officially established in 2021. Founded by Doreen Heng Liu, the lab is a pioneer in research and design in the current GBA and global urbanization. Through design-oriented research methods and an interdisciplinary approach, combining teaching, exhibitions, publications, academic conferences, experimental design practice, and research and development, the GBA Lab is dedicated to cross-disciplinary integration and the exploration of innovative, human-centered solutions to contemporary urban and rural spatial problems.

Project Team: NODE Architecture & Urbanism
1 Yong-chong River Lock: Doreen Heng Liu, Jiebin Huang, Youzhi Wang
2 KU Landscape: Memories on the Ground: Doreen Heng Liu, Yijuan Wu, Liu Yang, Zanning Huang, Zhang Shihan, Xu Jingyue, Ruan Yiling, Ni Xiaoyi, Peng Ziqi (Intern)
3 Shenzhen Lotus Water Culture Base: Doreen Heng Liu, Jiebin Huang, Zanning Huang, Liu Yang, Xu Jingyue, Lin Xiaohong, Huang Junhao, Yang Jiahui, Xu Zhibo, Lu Qingsong, Zhou Yupeng
Interns: Lu Weimin, Zeng Shuya, Wang Manzhi, Tang Yueyu, Li Xin, Tian Haoyuan
4 Pingshan High School Pedestrian Bridge: Doreen Heng Liu, Jiebin Huang, Yijuan Wu, Zhang Shihan
5 Pingshan Terrace: Doreen Heng Liu, Jiebin Huang, Zhang Shihan, Lian Chen, Lu Qingsong, Chang Xueshi (Intern)

Research Team: GBA Lab – The Greater Bay Area Innovation Design Lab, Shenzhen University
Director: Doreen Heng Liu
Si Liu, Yu Yan, Haoyang Wu
Research and Scenario Team: Fanrui Cheng, Weixin Chen, Junhao Zhang, Juncheng Zou, Yongkang Peng

Project implementation: Mexico
Project development: Mexico

The project consists of a large sawtooth roof that houses a court, gymnasium, and communal services, becoming the centerpiece of the sports complex. Outside, a series of soccer fields and basketball courts, as well as a running track, skate park, and playgrounds, create a quality infrastructure that allows residents to expand their opportunities and thus reduce commuting. The building consists of two parts: a lightweight metal roof that allows natural light and air to enter, and a ground floor with concrete stairs, walkways, and brick walls that house communal services. Designed with considerations for an extreme climate in a desert area, it creates open spaces that, in addition to allowing natural light and ventilation throughout, provide a safe place for users to engage in various physical activities. The use of simple materials emphasizes low maintenance and high durability, while generating various textures and giving a sense of identity. The building remains open at all times and encourages various ways of connecting sports facilities, surrounding leisure areas, and community services. As part of the Federal Government's Urban Improvement Program (SEDATU), along with the other six projects Fernanda has built in Sonora's border towns, this project strengthens the sense of belonging among residents. The exposed brick walls and materials establish a dialogue between architecture and landscape, providing the local community with fertile ground for an ongoing project, open to continuous transformation and collective participation.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Xangô Stone, a rock formation 27 m in diameter and 15 m high located on the outskirts of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, has a strong mythical and historical character. According to oral histories, enslaved Black people, fleeing, would pass through its crevice and disappear. A symbol of resistance recognized as the "Altar of Xangô," the stone is a sacred monument for African-based religions and was declared a national heritage site by the municipality in 2017 following a social mobilization. Located in an environmentally protected area, it constitutes a central element of the Assis Valente Environmental Protection Area (APA) and led to the creation of the Xangô Stone Park, covering 4.46 hectares, the first in Brazil to be named after an Orisha.

Designed in 2018 by FFA Arquitetura e Urbanismo for the Mário Leal Ferreira Foundation (Salvador City Hall), through a participatory process involving public agencies, communities, and surrounding religious temples, the project reaffirms the cultural and religious symbolism of the site, integrating nature and built space. Among the identified threats were the impact of Assis Valente Avenue and the pressure of occupation on the forest. In response, a road detour was proposed, creating a buffer zone and a retention basin associated with local legends, as well as an environmental monitoring route to protect the vegetation.

The urban design was structured in three layers: experience (paths and spaces for the convergence of Afro-Brazilian culture), memory (support for Afro-Brazilian memory, integrating stone, water, and vegetation), and intimacy (narrow forest trails for more secluded experiences). The program included a support building with an auditorium, a space for a memorial for Candomblé nations, and administrative and maintenance spaces, articulated by a rammed earth wall that revives traditional techniques.

The implementation respected the topography, occupying a previously deforested area, and fostered a symbiosis between the building and the natural environment. The building features a landscaped green roof, cross-ventilation, and rainwater and solar energy harvesting. The materials used—stabilized earth, ecological brick, wood, natural stone, and Corten steel—ensure low environmental impact and high thermoacoustic performance. The landscaping highlighted sacred species, reinforcing the integration with nature and the religious character of the park.

The project's implementation, particularly due to the adoption of bioconstruction techniques in a public project, required the support of the management and technical teams of the Mário Leal Ferreira Foundation and specialized academic consultancy. The intense participation of African-Brazilian communities ensured the expression of the symbolism of stone, raw earth, and vegetation as a primordial framework. Inaugurated in May 2022, Pedra de Xangô Park thus represents an emblematic space of cultural resistance and environmental integration, contributing to the fight against climate change and strengthening Afro-Brazilian identity in Salvador.

Project implementation: USA
Project development: USA

“Wasted No More” is a self-sustaining desert residence in Pioneertown, California, that prioritizes the recovery of construction waste through the use of “Waste” Blocks—commonly known as bin blocks or concrete retaining blocks. These 6 x 2 x 2 feet blocks are formed from conventional construction surplus, utilizing concrete left over from trucks after pouring concrete for other buildings. This approach offers an economically viable and ecologically conscious prototype that finds lasting value in neglected building remnants. The thermal mass of the massive blocks buffers the desert’s temperature extremes, while the building’s orientation and stepped form naturally mitigate solar heat gain, inviting natural light and cross-ventilation. Powered by solar energy and drawing water from an existing well, “Wasted No More” minimizes its environmental footprint in California’s high desert landscape.

The project is the result of a partnership between the award-winning architecture and research firms Mutuo and There There, both based in Los Angeles. The collaboration stemmed from a shared passion for projects made from waste. During a visit to a recycling plant, the studios discovered the "Waste" Blocks, which became the basis for a repurposed architecture, seeking to give new meaning to neglected materials and methods.

Mutuo, an award-winning design and research firm in Los Angeles, was founded in 2014 by immigrants Fernanda Oppermann and Jose Herrasti. From the outset, they have explored the extraordinary in the use of ordinary materials and methods, striving to create meaningful impact through architecture. To expand Mutuo's reach, their research develops affordable-by-design building systems that aim to simplify the construction process with faster, more cost-effective housing solutions. Their design is rooted in listening to people's stories, seeking collaborations with communities who, like them, navigate identities of "here" and "there" every day.

There There is an award-winning architecture firm founded in Los Angeles in 2022 that challenges conventional ideas through design and research. Adopting a radical "tabula-NON-rasa" approach, the studio unearths layers of physical and intangible information, present and past, that give meaning to places. Their experimental work includes projects in California, Mexico, and Europe, as well as recognized urban design proposals. All of their projects aim to create meaningful experiences and materialize alternative imaginaries.

Project implementation: Argentina
Project development: Argentina

vbrügg is the firm of architect Valentín Brügger, a Córdoba native and graduate of FAUD-UNC. It is a personal space for architectural and artistic production, experimentation, learning, and communication, where he works individually and collectively.

Casa Lelis is located in Los Reartes, a community in the mountains of Córdoba, Argentina, where traditional architecture is characterized by stone walls and lightweight roofs made of twigs and metal sheets. In this context, the project respects local technology and synthesizes its materiality in concrete and white elements. On a 10 x 30 lot, the 8 x 12 house is organized in longitudinal strips that define the ground floor areas: service, living room, and gallery, on which the bedrooms on the upper floor are superimposed perpendicularly.

To the south is the service module, built in cyclopean concrete and of a contained scale. Its stone facade continues toward the interior in the warm areas, in front of the kitchen, in the center of the fireplace, and behind the barbecue. This solid volume has two irregular, faceted perforations, as if they were large quarried stones. One at the back creates a small balcony overlooking the garden, and the other is a mirror that reflects a portion of the mountainous landscape in the facade's composition, allowing observation of the city's hustle and bustle from the kitchen.

On the staircase, the concrete overflows toward the living room, with its first steps emerging from the ground and rising like a light structure of folded white sheet metal floating between the concrete walls. To the north are the other two modules intended for social spaces, featuring tectonic and industrial technology, and material unity through the white finish.

The structure consists of a metal frame arranged every four meters, supporting the roof. This, in turn, is constructed of round twigs, clad internally with wooden planks and externally with corrugated metal sheets. This lightness allows the interior space to flow, integrating the living room with the gallery. The upper floor overlooks both the courtyard and the dining room.

Finally, the house is enveloped by a system of movable enclosures that creates and defines an intermediate space. The various opening configurations regulate the entry of light, defining the interior atmosphere. Thus, the envelope becomes mutable, sensitive to the environment and use. As this is a weekend home, it remains closed most of the time, emphasizing its formal synthesis.
Details such as the entrance door handle made of four Micosa Branca stones, a suspended field stone step on the porch, the intentional changes in scale and a glazed line along the house, which separates the white from the concrete base, aim to reinforce the evident duality between solidity and lightness of the work.

With a carefully directed opening to the mountainous landscape, the house blends harmoniously into its surroundings. Furthermore, the overlapping of different construction techniques reinforces the dialogue between the essential, the lasting, and the ethereal.

Project implementation: Italy
Project development: Italy, France

The ISTAT headquarters is a project based on ethical, strategic, economic, and functional choices, with a focus on space and resource efficiency. By optimizing the design, construction costs are reduced by approximately €6.5 million compared to the competition budget, while ensuring high performance, long-lasting durability, and a representative institutional image. The building is an L-shaped volume of 38,000 m² designed to accommodate 2,000 users, set within an 8,100 m² public park that includes a reflecting pool and sports trails. Local travertine, used as a brise-soleil on the south, east, and west facades and as a ventilated cladding on the north, interacts with natural light and evokes the collective memory of Rome. The building's optimized plan minimizes floor space and costs, allowing savings to be reinvested in advanced energy and environmental efficiency measures, including ventilated envelopes, photochromic and photovoltaic glazing, bioclimatic atriums, rainwater harvesting systems, and green roofs. The interiors are flexible, filled with natural light, and promote organizational well-being, offering unobstructed views of the vegetation and numerous common areas. Atriums and landscaped balconies create inviting breakout spaces, improving thermal comfort and indoor air quality. In addition to functional excellence, the project contributes to the city with a generous landscape: a public maritime pine forest set on a gently undulating, cool, and sheltered site, providing lasting environmental and social value to the urban context.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

KAAN Architecten: Building for People, Nature and Future Generations
Our field is constantly evolving. Architecture is increasingly taking on a deeper social meaning and actively contributing to the well-being of people and nature. We don't just focus on building design, but recognize that each intervention directly impacts our planet's ecosystem and climate. In this way, we are building a future in which architecture makes a real difference to both society and the world around us.

A good building requires more than design skill; it requires awareness of sustainability, social value, and environmental impact. No architect can achieve this alone—it requires collaboration, openness to the community, and input from diverse experts. Advances in materials technology, climate adaptation, building systems, construction methods, and cultural history all play a vital role. Equally important is how a building is received by its residents and users, as valued and appreciated spaces are preserved and passed on, extending their intrinsic useful life and ultimately making them more sustainable.

In our projects, we seek to bring all these factors together and make informed choices. On the other hand, we seek value in obsolete buildings, which often serve as the foundation for their transformation into the future. For us, a good project always begins with a strong narrative, one in which everyone involved believes and in which each participant can offer valuable input.
At the 14th São Paulo Architecture Biennial, KAAN Architecten presents three projects that explore the relationship between architecture, landscape, and memory: the Eco-Museum and Orla Piratininga Park in Niterói; the Marcos Amaro Art Factory (FAMA) in Itu; and the Lagoa do Sino Library at UFSCar in Buri, São Paulo. Different in scale, program, and context, the projects reveal a common approach: understanding architecture as an ongoing process, attentive to the transformations of the territory, cultural heritage, and possibilities for social coexistence.

The Eco-Museum acts as a catalyst for environmental regeneration and social inclusion, serving as a community forum, educational space, and a landmark for valuing biodiversity. This structure is part of the Piratininga Waterfront Park, developed under the leadership of Phytorestore, the largest phytoremediation project in Latin America, restoring 720,000 m² of the lagoon through filter gardens and new public areas.

The renovation of the Marcos Amaro Art Factory revives the memory of an early 20th-century industrial heritage site, listed by CONDEPHAAT, and transforms it into a dynamic cultural hub. The masterplan embraces time: ruins and historical layers coexist with new structures, preserving authenticity and nurturing creative processes.

UFSCar's Lagoa do Sino Library, developed in partnership with Triptyque, establishes itself as the campus's core. Combining a plaza, auditorium, and offices, the building combines traditional construction techniques, such as rammed earth, with contemporary wood solutions. The result is a sustainable, permeable, and socially active space that values local knowledge and fosters community identity.
Together, the three projects highlight the diversity and coherence of KAAN Architecten's practice: from heritage restoration to sustainable innovation, from the territorial to the everyday. All reaffirm the conviction that architecture should foster encounters, strengthen bonds between people and landscapes, and design possible futures based on attentive listening to the present. In this way, together, we are building architecture that is not only functional and aesthetic, but also socially valued and resilient.

Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil

Coming soon.

Project implementation: USA
Project development: USA

This project investigated the relationship between food, architectural, and urban systems within the context of sustainable and self-sufficient agricultural production in Hawaii. Despite being the only US state with a 12-month agricultural season, the island currently has only 10 days of food reserves if its air and/or sea connections with the mainland are compromised. In this same remote context, approximately 1,000 years ago, the Ahupua'a, a traditional natural resource management system, was created. In this system, ecological elements organize and feed back into each other in a vertical band extending from the ocean to the mountains. Within the geological section, through the coexistence of habitation and land cultivation, the system transforms the watershed into an intensive technological platform for food production. Before the European invasion (1778), several of these systems were fully functional and supported an estimated population of 800,000. Currently, only a few fragments such as lagoon fields (Lo'i), fishponds (loko) and dry land terraces (Kuaiwi) can still be found scattered throughout the islands.

To synchronize demands for urbanization and food production with vernacular strategies and management of environmental conditions in the river basin and ocean, the proposed master plan aims to optimize the existing production system, mediating the development of its urbanization, assuming the role of a support system. By introducing food production at the neighborhood scale through the manipulation of the existing relief, the architecture and landscape become an integrated system.

The new urban morphology enables water purification and retention for irrigating urban gardens. The proposed system also redesigns the river's course, responding to parameters such as topography, rock formation, and existing vegetation. By creating streams and retention/treatment ponds for irrigating crops integrated into the housing system, ecological buffer zones are established, thus promoting sustainable densification of the urban periphery adjacent to environmentally protected areas.

The challenges faced by Oahu with the growing pressure for urbanization in areas of environmental value are not unique: countries in the global South, such as Brazil, could benefit from a territorial organization system like Ahu'pua. Many islands and bays in Brazil also have conditions very similar to Oahu: a tropical climate, mountainous terrain, with freshwater streams, and sufficient river precipitation to support crops without mechanical irrigation. Some notable examples are the islands of Florianópolis, Fernando de Noronha, and the Ilha Grande region. The latter, in particular, has been experiencing significant pressure for urbanization, especially due to the tourism industry.

Project implementation: Brazil, Bolivia
Project development: Brazil, Bolivia

Forest Gens is a critical cartography project that reveals the extent of anthropogenic transformations in the Amazon. Using advanced mapping techniques in the Amazonian context, the project reveals the multiple layers that make up the region. From the footprint of current societies to territorial manipulations dating back centuries, the mapping presents the Amazon as a complex, human-shaped landscape, not as a homogeneous, untouched forest.

The work portrays the Amazon territory at multiple scales, highlighting how the interaction between geography and human interventions—past and present—allows for the development of hypotheses about the region's occupation. A focus on recent data obtained through remote sensing images in the Cotoca region of Bolivia reveals archaeological remains of ancient forms of low-density tropical urbanism. Similarly, a system of interconnected sites of indigenous black earth—organic residues of human occupation used to estimate the size and duration of ancient settlements—suggests prolonged manipulation of the Amazon environment by human societies.

Taken together, these visualizations contribute to raising awareness of the traces our ways of relating to this landscape have left throughout history, profoundly altering the boundaries between nature and society in this environment. The work is expected to contribute to the growing debate on how our societies can reinvent the relationship between urbanization and nature conservation, and imagine radically new—and less anthropocentric—futures for the Amazon.

Authorship
Concept: POLES | Political Ecology of Space
Collaboration: AO | Architects Office
Team:
Gabriel Kozlowski (Director)
Miguel Darcy
Carol Passos
Thiago Engers
Chiara Scotoni
Archaeological Research in Bolivia (Direction):
Heiko Prümers
Carla Jaimes Betancourt

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.

Project implementation: Italy, Brazil
Project development: Brazil

As part of the 14th Architecture Biennial, whose central theme is “Extremes,” Studio Arthur Casas, in collaboration with the Arthur Casas Institute of Architecture and Innovation (IACAI), presents a timeline that systematizes architectural and urban projects designed to address the challenges posed by climate change at different scales.

The projects selected for the exhibition span a diverse range of geographic and climatic contexts, from interventions in dense urban environments, such as the Ícaro Building in Curitiba, to initiatives in the Legal Amazon, such as the Moitará Exchange Center, located in the Xingu Indigenous Park, and the MuCA in Belterra, Pará. These works exemplify an architectural approach that prioritizes integration with the bioclimatic and cultural specificities of each location, promoting solutions that combine technological innovation and environmental responsibility.

Based on research into their own practice, Studio Arthur Casas and IACAI selected the following projects:

-Brazilian Pavilion (Milan, Italy, 2014-2015; Naples, Italy, 2025-2027);
-MuCA – Administrative Village (Belterra, Pará, 2018-2028);
-Icarus Building (Curitiba, Paraná, 2014-2019)
-Moitará Exchange Center (Xingu Park, 2024-2026)

The timeline outlined in the exhibition highlights the consolidation of sustainable thinking in Studio Arthur Casas' practice over the past two decades. This journey culminated in the creation of IACAI, a non-profit institution dedicated to research into technologies and innovations geared toward sustainability and industrialization in the construction industry. The institute seeks to identify and address gaps in the development of construction practices, examining the potential impacts of such advances in addressing environmental issues affecting Brazil.

Through the Biennial, Studio Arthur Casas and IACAI reaffirm their commitment to architecture that transcends aesthetic functionality, positioning themselves as agents of socio-environmental transformation. The Biennial exhibition offers an opportunity to discuss and inspire new approaches that integrate innovation, sustainability, and climate responsibility, contributing to the advancement of theoretical and practical discourse in the field of architecture.