Impure Montages of an Architecture Called Forest

Abstract

The starting point for this article was a fieldwork project carried out in the Rio Gregorio Indigenous Land, located in the Amazonian Forest in Acre State, where a series of architectural projects were developed together with a group of Yawanawá women in 2016. The objective of this visual work, which recovers some fragments, sketches and photographs of the process, is to open an investigative and experimental debate that considers the knowledge of the Yawanawá group as active and influential. The idea is to show that their geographical, constructive, biological, artistic, cultural, political and ecological knowledge is a powerful instrument in the production of ideas and thoughts in the field of counter-hegemonic architecture. Thus, we propose a methodology for thinking and practicing together, which aims to de-hierarchize the classic relations of knowledge production. Through the elaboration of impure visual montages, we seek to amplify voices and memories in layers of coexisting times. This reflection focuses on manifesting that Amazonian Forest Architecture is the product of an Amerindian agenda, designed collectively and intergenerationally. Building land, nurturing soils, generating other species, producing botanical abundance and significance implies the action and production of a counter-hegemonic project, formulating the conditions of an Architecture called Forest.