In the Yawanawa Village, Rosenbaum proposes a new way of building and inhabiting.

In the heart of the Amazon rainforest, on the banks of the Gregório River (AC), an architectural ensemble was born in the Sacred Yawanawa Village that proposes a new way of building and living in the forest. Designed in partnership between the chief Nixiwaka Biraci Yawanawa and the architecture office Rosenbaum Arquitetura, led by Marcelo Rosenbaum, the project is the result of 14 years of collaboration and was built in six months with the direct involvement of the community.

The University of Ancestral Knowledge, the Ceremonial Center (Shuhu), and the Model House form this ensemble that shapes to the territory and values traditional knowledge in dialogue with contemporary architectural solutions. In 2025, the project will be one of Brazil's representatives at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – Venice Biennale.

"We do not arrive with a ready idea. Our role is to recognize ancestral knowledge and integrate this knowledge into a space built with respect and meaning," says Marcelo Rosenbaum. "It is a project that not only respects the territory but is shaped by it. A construction made with the forest, not against it."

The structures were built with native wood extracted and processed locally, by a multidisciplinary team formed by indigenous people, riverside builders, and technicians from various fields. The logistics were challenging: it involved, for example, the transportation of a disassembled tractor upstream and the presence of workers in the village for long periods.

The University houses an industrial kitchen, collective dormitories, classrooms, and a cafeteria for 250 people. The Model House presents an integrated organization, with thermal comfort and cross ventilation. The Ceremonial Center, with a diameter of 41 m, 33 m of free span and 1,150 m², is dedicated to rituals and spiritual practices.

"What has been built in our village is the most updated contemporary architecture: the one that does not harm nature,” says chief Biraci Yawanawa. “Everything we construct comes from our ancestry. We are a people connected to new technologies but with our roots in the ground. We take care of the nature around us, and we can't do this alone. We need alliances and partnerships."

Selected by the Venice Biennale's curatorship for representing a situated architecture, collaborative and sensitive to climate emergency, the project integrates different forms of intelligence — ancestral, natural, collective — and proposes a future where the encounter of knowledge is essential to face the environmental and social challenges of the present. "Alongside chief Nixiwaka, we learned that the forest is not a place to be conquered but a place with which we must dialogue," Rosenbaum concludes.