Paulo Tavares / autonoma

This installation composes a ‘forest pavilion’ where two interrelated projects are set in dialogue. First, An Architectural Botany revisits the photo archive produced by ethnobotanist Professor William Balée during his path-breaking research with the Ka’apor of eastern Amazonia in the 1980s.
Second, Trees, Vines, Palms and Other Architectural Monuments, presents an archaeology of ancient Xavante settlements forcibly displaced by the Brazilian military dictatorship in the 1960s.
Together, the projects establish a dialogue between theory and practice, knowledge and ground, visual cultures and design advocacy, weaving a conceptual field in which the forest appears as a radical, new form of architecture. Beyond listing monuments to be dismantled, we need to build new memorial landscapes to care for, land sites that can enable other histories to be told, all the while repairing communities and restoring the environment. Grounded and global, architecture-as-advocacy simultaneously responds to situated land conflicts and the earth-politics of climate change.

Authorial collaborators
Architectural Botany: William Balée
Trees, Vines, Palms and Other Architectural Monuments: in collaboration with the Xavante of Marãiwatsédé
Research team: Domingos Tsereõmorãté Hö’awari, Policarpo Waire Tserenhorã, Dario Tserewhorã, Marcelo Abaré, Magno Silvestre
Historic consultancy: Damião Paridzané, Cosme Rité, Caime Waiassé, Jurandir Siridiwe, Policarpo Waire Tserenhorã, Dario Tserewhorã, and Marcelo Abaré
Translation from Xavante: Caime Waissé
Motion design: Gabriel Kozlowski, Thiago Engers
Digital model of archaeological sites: Grabriel Menotti
Public advocacy campaign: Paula Marujo
With the additional support of
CCA and GSAPP Columbia

Architectural Botany was originally commissioned by the CCA – Canadian Center for Architecture. Trees, Vines, Palms and Other Architectural Monuments was originally commissioned by the Brazilian Public Prosecutor’s Office.