This exhibition explores the interaction between architecture and nature as integral components of a cultural identity. Architecture is related to culture, which is why the interaction between culture and nature have been concepts that have been perceived as opposites throughout history. While nature is conceived as independent of architecture, culture refers to the practices, knowledge and customs developed in our societies.
Thinkers such as Claude Lévi-Strauss have marked a relational vision that suggests that culture and environment are not in conflict, but rather maintain a constant dialogue. His work, which includes innovative perspectives on kinship and myth in native societies, has influenced contemporary debates on ethnocentrism and ecological crisis, as well as the discussion on how to inhabit and relate to our space. Although the opposition between nature and culture has been a useful methodological tool to classify the world, this approach has been challenged by ethnographic studies of the 20th century that reveal that the category “nature” blocks multiple ways of understanding and inhabiting the world.
Through this perspective, this exhibition analyzes how built spaces can relate to the natural environment, establishing harmonious connections between humans and their surroundings. And in a context where sustainability is more relevant than ever, the exhibition invites us to rethink our relationship with the environment, not as a dichotomy, but as an opportunity to promote new ways of living that integrate nature as part of the same social environment. The discipline of architecture, in transforming and drawing on both nature and culture, becomes an essential means of exploring this interrelationship.
Indigenous thought does not establish a clear ontological distinction between humans and non-humans. In this approach, all beings share a similar interiority, differing only in their physical forms. This invites us to reconsider the relationship between human settlements and nature and to explore ways of inhabiting the world, integrating the cultural dimension in a continuous dialogue.
The exhibition proposes to open us to other perspectives that encourage a more flexible view of the relationship between humans and the non-human world. Instead of separating us, our differences can contribute to form part of a broader social relationship. This discussion can be interpreted by architecture and can transcend as an instrument to integrate the natural and the cultural into a single system.