Estúdio Gustavo Utrabo - Children Village in Bodoquena

The Pantanal, a continuous 250,000 km2 floodplain, is 1,300 kilometres from São Paulo, near the border with Bolivia and Paraguay. This majestic biome with its monumental scale, clay soils and intense colours, is a complex limestone aquifer with crystalline water.

The second boarding school built by the Bradesco Foundation is located in this remote location. Thousands of children from the region have attended since it opened in the 1980s. The school now provides education, food, lodging and all other necessary care to 800 children from low-income families at any one time.

Although the Youth Village in Bodoquena had undergone large-scale maintenance work over the years, a new approach was needed because its initial profile no longer matched the Bradesco Foundation’s parameters of excellence. In order to meet these goals, the buildings were renovated to provide better comfort, energy efficiency, privacy, use of the existing facilities and access to the pavilions in the rain.