Aleph Zero talks about the Canuanã Farm School

The Escola da Fazenda Canuanã, a project by Rosenbaum and Aleph Zero, has received yet another award: Building Of The Year 2018 , promoted by ArchDaily . In addition to this honor, the school was nominated for the RIBA Awards , chosen to participate in the Venice International Architecture Biennale and won first place in the Instituto Tomie Ohtake AkzoNobel Architecture Prize 2017 .

Located in the rural area of Formoso do Araguaia, the Canuanã Farm encompasses three biomes: the Cerrado, the Amazon rainforest and the Pantanal. For almost 40 years, it has housed a boarding school maintained by the Bradesco Foundation. The goal of the renovation was to provide new housing for the children and young people who study there. The team of architects and professionals went to Tocantins to get in touch with the students and residents so that they could understand their needs and demands and hear their stories. This approach is the proposal of the Instituto A Gente Transforma, led by Marcelo Rosenbaum. The result was a human architecture that reflects cultures.

In an interview with CASACOR , the partner-architect of the Aleph Zero office, Gustavo Utrabo , commented on his experience.

How was the contact with children and young people and what was the experience of immersion in their reality like?

It was an incredible experience, they are very loving young people and children with a very beautiful education. They have an interest in each other that I had not seen before, an exercise of presence in search of knowledge that is unusual, at least for me.

How was the creative teamwork with Marcelo Rosenbaum?

It was a very interesting experience. Marcelo has a very sensitive view of people and popular culture. I believe that these were combined expertises, in the sense that our perspective as architects comes from this field of knowledge, which also involves popular culture, like Lina Bo Bardi's perspective, for example, but carries a constructive background.

Canuanã Farm is located far from major urban centers. What was the biggest technical difficulty you encountered in executing the works?

I believe the question is very accurate. Our biggest challenge was the distances, everything took a long time to arrive, so the project was an exercise in how to build far away. In response to this, most of the elements were prefabricated and assembled on site, thus gaining agility, construction precision and greater financial control.

How did students and staff react when they received the project? Did they identify with the architecture?

I may be biased in answering this question, but from what I've heard, everyone has received the project very well and is enjoying it. The issue of identifying with architecture is very personal and dangerous. For everyone to identify with the architectural symbol, this symbol would have to be recognized by everyone, which would be impossible for children. However, I believe that the project has a spatial generosity and a careful construction. I believe that this is something that really impacts the children's daily lives, since the building will be there for at least 60 years. So it couldn't just be a look at the present; it had to be a look at the future.

The exercise of using techniques linked to the region goes beyond simply identifying oneself; it has enabled a constructive legacy as a possibility of knowing how to do something, which I find very beautiful as a trait of a culture.

You are being (more than deservedly) recognized on an international level. What are your new plans?

I believe that the awards help us as a nice incentive, but they are not the end. We are a very small office, full of energy and we do not have a rigid format, which allows us to investigate many different things.

We really like building houses, they are a very interesting possibility for development, however, as a Brazilian, I believe that we have to have a civic outlook for national development, I say development not only from an economic perspective, but something more holistic, we can no longer ignore parts of our society or think that this problem will be solved later, so I understand that we need to work together, as a society and the architect has an important role in this context that needs to be further developed.