Video: A village is emerging in the Amazon, showing how nature and architecture blend together

In the Yawanawá people’s sacred territory in the western Amazon, architecture has become a tool for rethinking civilization. Here, on the riverbank, three buildings have emerged from the meeting between Chief Nixiwaka Biraci Brasil Yawanawá and architect Marcelo Rosenbaum.

The story is unusual: it was the chief who invited the architect to rebuild his village – not to translate the culture into a Western design language, but to listen to it. Together they have created spaces where life, rituals, and traditional knowledge can unfold in the future alongside new technologies.

A unique collaboration

The construction took shape through conversations with the elders and with the families living by the river. The rain, the climate, and the rhythm of the forest have defined the framework for the architecture: a university for ancestral knowledge, a ceremonial center, and a model house. Together they form an architectural whole that reflects the Yawanawá people’s worldview – an understanding in which nature, humanity, spirituality, and the cosmos are deeply interconnected.

In the sacred village, the knowledge of the forest is carried forward through the construction itself. New technologies blend with the tribe’s own way of living in balance with nature. The project was developed in collaboration with the Brazilian studio Rosenbaum Arquitetura, which for many years has worked to rethink the architect’s role in Brazil.