Politics of the Forest
Paulo Tavares
Forest Architectures
Debate
The architect and researcher Paulo Tavares challenges the forest/city dichotomy in his study of landscapes of the Amazon rainforest and advocates decolonisation of architecture and design.
The forest is frequently presented as the antithesis of the city. The exuberant, wild, chaotic nature of the jungle or forest is contrasted with the orderly Cartesian architecture of the city as a political space of civilisation par excellence. For centuries, this narrative has been used to justify the “conquest” of nature and of peoples who live in harmony with nature, as has happened with the invasion of the Amazon and the physical and cultural annihilation of a large part of its people. The researcher and architect Paulo Tavares has explored the traces left by Indigenous communities. Subtle, but evident to the expert eye, they reveal a complex architecture of the rainforest that is very different from the usual primitivist descriptions. The forest landscape is described by Tavares as nature that has been deliberately constructed over generations by its inhabitants in a spatial project that challenges and expands western notions of “city”, “heritage”, and “ruins”. This understanding is also an invitation to decolonise design and architecture, and to promote practices that are rooted in the earth, as fruit of interaction between humans and non-humans, and that question the division between nature and culture.
Moderators: Cristina Goberna
Participants: Paulo Tavares
This activity is part of Amazons, Politics of the Forest