Estúdio Gustavo Utrabo - Children's Village in Canuanã

The continuum, the vastness and the thin imaginary borderline of the savannah protects the daily lives and knowledge of the Brazilians who live in the country’s central region. The architecture proposed for this area should not be distinguished from this feature. It is this breadth, and also the beauty of the people who inhabit it, that moves us.

But how can we make architecture relevant in a place marked by its memories, techniques, aesthetics and rhythms? How can we work with a place whose culture is now being modernized in the absence of any memory, fostering a dream of progress projected by the media? How to intervene in a place marked by manual agricultural labour, indigenous cultures and the delightful forces of nature? How to blend culture and nature in the specific programme for a young peoples’ residence in a boarding school?

Using these questions, the project strives to encourage cultural reflection, local building techniques and the construction of a notion of belonging, all necessary for the growth of the children at this school in Canuanã.