The 14th International Architecture Biennial of São Paulo opened at the Oca in Ibirapuera Park, presenting a comprehensive exploration of architectural responses to climate change under the theme "Extremes: Architectures for a Hot World." The exhibition, which runs until October 19, brings together architects, researchers, artists, and communities to address the urgent question of how humanity can inhabit Earth during times of environmental extremes.
Unlike previous editions that spread across multiple city locations, curators Clevio Rabelo, Jera Guarani, Karina de Souza, Marcella Arruda, Marcos Certo, and Renato Anelli concentrated this year's exhibition under a single roof. This decision allows the curatorial narrative to unfold clearly and directly, with the entire journey organized into sections that weave together ancestral practices and emerging technologies, material experiments and critical perspectives, local projects and global debates.
The exhibition is structured around nine main sections that function as chapters of a unified story, each offering perspectives on present challenges and future possibilities. "Visions of the Future" proposes alternatives to the climate crisis, while "Reforesting the Urban" explores how cities can restore ecological connections. "Knowledge in Practice" highlights traditional skills, and "Building Green" revisits materials and construction processes. Additional sections include "Reducing Inequalities," which seeks spatial solutions to social tensions, "Circular Together," focusing on flows and reuse, "Recover While There Is Time," examining retrofit approaches, "Starting From Water," restoring relationships with water resources, and "We Will Stay Here," showcasing low-impact construction techniques.
Landscape architecture and urban ecology feature prominently throughout the exhibition, particularly in the "Reforesting the Urban" section, where greenery is conceived as vital infrastructure capable of reducing heat islands and regenerating degraded soils. The Sponge City/Sponge Planet proposal by Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu demonstrates how nature can partner with engineering to face floods and droughts, enhancing metropolitan resilience in the context of climate crisis.
Brazilian projects exemplify this ecological approach through highly significant initiatives. The Tietê Ecological Park, designed in the 1970s by Ruy Ohtake, Aziz Ab'Sáber, and their team, stands out for replacing channelization and expressway logic with continuous environmental infrastructure, combining flood control, riparian forest restoration, and public space creation. In São Carlos, three projects focusing on watercourse recovery and stream restoration demonstrate how restoring riparian forests and valuing springs can reverse urban degradation.
Traditional knowledge and Indigenous architecture receive special attention through several installations and projects. The OCO installation, produced by Cambará Instituto in collaboration with master bamboo craftsman Lúcio Ventania, celebrates Afro-Brazilian ancestry and collective creation. This six-meter-high structure, adorned with thousands of handcrafted beads made by women in vulnerable situations, involved ten Black women architects from different regions of Brazil who followed the complete bamboo cycle from cutting to assembly.
Indigenous architectural practices are documented through Casa Floresta, which transforms construction practices of the Guarani, Yudjá, and Kamayurá peoples into community manuals. The film "Y, Yvyrupa" by Richard Wera Mirim and Paulo Tavares, along with the map "Nhandereko: Where Our Culture Lives," focuses on the Guarani territory of Jaraguá, emphasizing its spiritual, political, and ecological dimensions. The Sacred Waters project by the Urbz collective in Mumbai highlights how urban Indigenous communities in India reinterpret water cycles as both cultural practice and survival strategy.
Material experimentation forms a crucial component of the exhibition, functioning as a laboratory for innovative construction techniques. The Tecnoindia Module by José Afonso Botura Portocarrero combines modular systems with Indigenous house wisdom, while Light Rammed Earth Blocks by Arquipélago and Alain Briatte Mantchev point toward sustainable prefabrication by combining earth and straw in low-impact components. Miriti, an Amazonian material presented by Guá Arquitetura, emerges as both social technology and avant-garde raw material.
The Ecosapiens project, by Marta Levy, Felipe Pinheiro, and Denise Covassin, proposes hemp as a construction material capable of capturing carbon, while Terra by CRAterre showcases the versatility of earth as one of humanity's oldest building materials, reinterpreted with new techniques. Academic projects including Carmodésica, PI Prototype, and Pompeia Dome demonstrate how university research in wood can generate flexible, demountable structures adapted to various contexts.
Emergency architecture and collective structures address the immediate needs of disaster-prone environments. The Emergency Dining Hall, conceived by sauermartins in response to the 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul, goes beyond temporary solutions to become a community space with lasting legacy. Its roundwood roof and long communal table combine construction speed with social warmth. The Paper Tube House revisits Japanese architect Shigeru Ban's approach, using accessible, recyclable materials to create temporary shelters that can be easily assembled during crises.
Urban infrastructure and reuse strategies are explored through retrofit and adaptation examples. The rehabilitation and reuse of Módulo Iansã, a prefabricated reinforced mortar building by João Filgueiras Lima from 1988, illustrates how resource efficiency and rational construction can make restoration feasible. The Tank Shanghai project by Chinese studio OPEN Architecture expands the conversation on how cultural spaces can emerge from landscapes and abandoned infrastructures.
The Biodesign Lab, coordinated by Graziela Nivoloni from the Istituto Europeo di Design, explores Brazilian biodiversity by merging scientific research and cultural knowledge to propose low-carbon alternatives. The group presents both an exhibition and workshop series at the Biennial, focusing on circularity and biomaterials as pathways to sustainable construction.
With its broad and ambitious narrative drawing on historical examples while branching into plural paths toward alternative futures, the Biennial presents itself as an atlas of possibilities where ancestral practices and technological innovations complement each other in responding to climate and social extremes. From hemp and concrete to innovative structures and modest renovations, earth and biomaterials, the constellation of projects and research gathered under the Oca's curved roof creates a comprehensive repertoire of architectures that envision not just buildings, but reimagined ways of life for a planet in crisis.
