Photo Credit: Christian Braga
Human culture and rainforest. Seemingly abundant, actually endangered. Rural and—rapidly, increasingly—urban. Amazonia is not where the climate problem is solved. It is, however, where the climate, housing, water, and air problems associated with intense fires, smoke, drought, flood and waste are lived. Amazonia represents a barometer of how well (read equitably and sustainably) global efforts are working to address the 21st century nexus of the climate crisis, legacies of environmental injustice, and social vulnerabilities concomitant with rapid, unplanned migration and urbanization. Riverfront communities living here are already pointing to how we can together adapt and amend, how we might grow and care, and ultimately how we can co-design our collective urban future, all while still protecting the immense wonders of the Amazonian biome. Are we paying attention to and adequately working with these communities who have resided with and in the forest throughout the centuries and possess the knowledge of how nature and human culture can thrive together?
Students and faculty from the Departments of Architecture at the Federal University of Amazonas, the University of São Paulo, and the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came together to consider how the architecture, design, and urban planning professions could learn from riverfront communities and might best serve them in the urbanizing Amazon to address and improve strategies for growth without waste, for quality over just quantity in urban life.
An exhibit of this work at COP30 in Belém, Brazil at the Inter-American Development Bank Pavillion highlights their work envisioning the future Amazonian city of Manaus. Student teams visited with and were inspired by riverfront communities across the Manaus region. The team learned from these communities’ day-to-day lives and their current strategies for dealing with the accumulation of solid waste and untreated wastewater in riverways, the cement enclosure of traditional, iconic river canals, the growing demand for affordable housing, the increasing urban heat profile, the lack of mobility options, and the intense (and intensifying) fluctuation of the Rio Negro.
The student teams’ work calls attention to the immense potential of three fundamentally Amazonian—and urban—communities, namely: flutuantes (floating houses on the river), palafitas (stilt houses in flood plains), and regular construction resting on dry land, including Indigenous urban neighborhoods. One such neighborhood, Parque das Tribos, houses thousands of residents who speak more than thirty Indigenous languages. Here are Indigenous households that were both expelled from their land and are kept still on the outskirts of the urban. Yet with these same communities, we learned that the very nature of the fluvial city holds the power to redefine and upgrade the power of shared urban sustainability.
Photo credit: Christian Braga
Participants:
Universidade Federal de Amazonas: Professor Marcos Cereto (Architecture), Alex Martins, Ângelo Pontes, Beatriz Atem, Ester Komorowski, Eliana Rego, Giovanna Assis, Julia Mendes, Juliana Cambeiro, Maria Eduarda Cohen, Nathyele de Souza Dias, Isabela Cavalcante.
Universidade de São Paulo: Professor Alexandre Delijaicov (Architecture) and Professor Angelo Bucci (Architecture), Ana Julia Bettio Pereira, Lucas Karmann, Mariana Peruchi and Professor Rodrigo Mendes (Architecture and Urbanism), USP alumnus at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS).
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Professor Angelo Bucci (Architecture) and Professor Gabriella Carolini (Urban Planning), Shreya Bansal, Aashna Daga, Valeria Duenas, Marine Gapihan, Anushka Maqbool, Reishan McIntosh, Jacob Payne, Kaede Polkinghorne. COP30 Exhibition leaders: Professor Marcelo Coelho (Architecture) and Gabriela Bila Advincula (Media Lab).
Acknowledgements: This collaboration was made possible with the generous support and partnership of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Cities Lab, the MIT-Luma Lab, the MIT Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism, and the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.