Cultivating Cities is an Amazonian speculative narrative that turns imagination into a tool for designing cities, territories, and futures. Initially conceived as a book, the work was presented as an exhibition panel at the 14th São Paulo Architecture Biennale. The project materialises a journey through the Amazon Basin and invites the public to reflect on architecture and urbanism through a fictional universe.
In this project, we follow the diary of Tawa, a young ribeirinha (a woman from an Amazonian riverside community) from the Rio Negro, who travels along the Amazon River between Manaós (present-day Manaus) and Mairi (present-day Belém), passing through floating cities, regenerated territories, and amphibious architectures that emerge after an environmental collapse in 2030.
Alongside the panel, a glossary of Amazonian words and references was developed to expand the reading of the work. It is also possible to listen to three excerpts from the story recorded in audio, available on Spotify.
This utopia stems from the desire to imagine cities from a spatio-temporal perspective distinct from current models. Although the Amazon hosts the largest tropical forest on Earth and 20% of the planet’s freshwater, 76% of its population lives in urban areas with the lowest access to drinking water in the country, revealing a contradiction between abundance and scarcity, marked by urban models detached from local knowledge.
Rather than announcing imminent ecological collapse, Cultivating Cities proposes an architectural utopia in which riverside and Indigenous cities take on a leading role, drawing upon ancestral knowledge for the regeneration of territories and the construction of collective futures.
Cultivating Cities is a project by Lab Igarité, a studio for research and creation situated between architecture, art, and urbanism. The Lab is an initiative by Natalia Figueredo and Isabella de Bonis, Amazonian architects and researchers.
General Coordination: @lab.igarite
Project Conception: Natalia Figueredo and Isabella de Bonis
Fictional Narrative Development: Natalia Figueredo
Illustration Development: @isabelladebonis_
Visual Identity and Graphic Design: