Architects:Plano Coletivo

Area:140m²

Year:2025

Photographs:Federico Cairoli

Lead Architects:Luciana Saboia, Eder Alencar, Matheus Seco

Category:Installation

Curators:Luciana Sabioa (FAU-Unb), Eder Alencar (ARQBR) e Matheus Seco (BLOCO Arquitetos)

Collaborators:André Velloso (ARQBR), Carolina Pescatori (FAU-Unb), Cauê Capillé (FAU-UFRJ), Daniel Mangabeira (BLOCO Arquitetos), Guilherme Lassance (FAU-UFRJ), Henrique Coutinho (BLOCO Arquitetos), Sérgio Marques (FAU-UFRGS)

Local Architect Italy:Eiletz Ortigas

Installation Execution:Creative Up Interiors

Structural Calculation Consulting:Maratá Engenharia

Installation Executive Project Team:Mariana Castro, Victor Itonaga

Content Production Team:Carolina Guida, Isadora Furtado, Isaac Alencar, Jéssica Duarte, João Magnus, Leonardo Nóbrega, Lucas Bandeira, Lucas Freitas, Lucas Marques, Luíza Ceruti, Marcela Peres, Paulo Honorato, Pedro Cardoso, Victor Suarez

Visual Programming Of Panels:Lia Tostes

City:Veneza

Country:Italy

(RE)Invention. The curation project representing Brazil at the 19th MIA - International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, is part of a reflection on recent archaeological discoveries of ancestral infrastructures in the Amazon territory to consider contradictions and question the socio-environmental conditions of contemporary cities. Represented in two acts, (RE)INVENTION constructs a narrative that traverses time and territories.

The first act occupies the smallest room of the Pavilion of Brazil and brings narratives of ancestral Brazil that invite us to rethink, based on recent archaeological studies from Central Amazonia, the real age of the "inhabited forest" of Brazil. About 10,000 years ago, during the long period since the beginning of the Holocene, Indigenous peoples occupied the lowlands of South America and shaped the landscapes around them, creating sophisticated infrastructures that integrated technical knowledge and strategies for adapting to the environment. Therefore, the occupation of this area is as ancient as that of other Indigenous peoples. From the soil, embankments, fill, retaining walls, and large structures were built to house thousands of inhabitants. The significant anthropogenic modifications resulting from this occupation established adaptations in nature and created landscapes. The Amazon rainforest, therefore, can be seen as the result of a balanced coexistence between man and nature.

The second act occupies the largest room of the pavilion and proposes to present design strategies that challenge everyday life in search of social equity and ecological balance in contemporary Brazil, a country constituted by a natural and urban heritage of exceptional richness, a product of the promise of development and the desire for cultural emancipation. Thus, the focus is on the possibility of recognition and valuation of design strategies and operations "encapsulated" in the ingenious existing production, inherited and appropriated. Complex, yet unequal; useful, yet limited; this is our "inherited infrastructure." In this case, it is not about recovering the image or aesthetic principles of exemplary projects from the past, but about updating the problem, putting it in suspension to consider contradictions, questioning the socio-environmental conditions of contemporary cities, and presenting possibilities for learning and action for future challenges. What lessons, in terms of relevance and significance, can we extract from the relationship between this built infrastructural heritage and the natural heritage?

The Pavilion of Brazil in Venice was recently restored based on a renovation proposal by Arquitetos Associados and Henrique Penha, part of the team's strategy for the curation of the 17th MIA. Designed by architects Henrique Mindlin, Giancarlo Palanti, and Walmir Amaral in 1960, the pavilion consists of two exhibition rooms with distinct characteristics. The smaller one features large floor-to-ceiling glass panels facing the lateral terraces. In turn, the second room has no openings at "eye level." Instead, natural light enters the space through large high windows made of translucent "U-glass" that surround the area.

Concept of the Exhibition Installation. The exhibition space was designed by the curatorial team using minimal elements that utilize the structure of the Pavilion of Brazil as support to reconfigure its internal spaces. In the first room (first act), all the elements of the installation rest on the floor. In the second room (second act), the installation is built from the balance of wooden panels, stones used as counterweights, and steel cables that form a system that, acted upon by forces of action and reaction, remains suspended and stable. In this way, the materials of the installation can easily be reassembled or recycled into new forms of utilization after the exhibition.

The exhibition system of the second room consists of horizontal panels and a plywood table made from reforested wood interconnected by tensioned steel cables. The balance of the loads in the system is made possible by the counterweight of marble blocks suspended on cables articulated in pulleys fixed to the ceiling and a loop fixed to the floor. The transmission of the loads is ensured by two steel cables in each set of panels, which intertwine at the central point of the system with a circular metal tube that distributes the tension forces and provides stability to the structure. The tension in the lower cable results from the direction of the vertical reaction to the loop, so that the table balances the horizontal efforts through compression. The table and the panels, in suspension, create a new structure and thus reconfigure the spatiality of the room. The Carrara marble used for the counterweights was "chiseled" by a local sculptor from larger blocks down to a maximum weight of 25kg per block.

Made of general wood, the design of the installation in both rooms is based on the idea of re-signifying the notion of infrastructure as a way of inhabiting (et. Latin strutura) and as a system (et. Greek systēma): an organized whole that comprises its parts in the pursuit of balance between culture and nature. The coexistence present in the ancestry of the Amazon territory inspires a look to debate existing strategies of contemporary cities, design actions that configure the art of effectively applying the resources at hand.

About the Collective Plan. The Collective Plan is a group of architects, professors, and researchers with diverse interests and backgrounds who collaborate freely around two common objectives: to discuss urban territory as a critical narrative and to reflect on architecture as a socio-environmental action. Currently, the Collective Plan consists of ten members who collaborate with each other in different ways: André Velloso (ARQBR), Carolina Pescatori (FAU-Unb), Cauê Capillé (FAU-UFRJ), Daniel Mangabeira (BLOCO Arquitetos), Eder Alencar (ARQBR), Guilherme Lassance (FAU-UFRJ), Henrique Coutinho (BLOCO Arquitetos), Luciana Saboia (FAU-Unb), Matheus Seco (BLOCO Arquitetos) Sérgio Marques (FAU-UFRGS).

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