Arquitecturas de Buen-Vivir Planetario An ongoing exploration into the Indigenous beliefs, practices, and value systems that express and protect the interconnectedness of all life.
April 24, 2026
Bogotá, Colombia
rearc institute's first symposium in Bogotá (February 2024) explored what it means to build in ways that restore, rather than extract, and to design with, rather than for. When we returned to Colombia that November, we deepened that inquiry over three days, moving between dialogue and immersion and engaging directly with the philosophies, materials, and practices that sustain buen vivir.
The Andean concept of buen vivir expresses a relational worldview in which humanity and nature are inseparable. It embraces the fundamental interconnectedness of all life through a holistic and integrated approach to solidarity and the rights of nature. Taking this as a point of departure, our program explored interdisciplinary methods for moving away from extraction and isolation and towards spatial practices informed by discourse, reciprocity, and harmony.
Today we find ourselves in the middle of a dialogue about what architecture can actually be and accomplish in different contexts, how we talk about those contexts and relate to them, and what design owes to communities and natural environments. That work does not happen in a vacuum. To practice informed, participatory architecture and design means to be in tune with the language, contexts, and rights of local communities and ecologies.
Featuring Marilyn Machado Mosquera, Kitambo/, La Maja Mina, Sher Herrera, Oasis Urbano, Arquitectas Colombianas, WAI Think Tank, Gabriela de Matos, COMUNAL, Island City Lab, Red Comunitaria Trans, Fundación Organizmo, Ana María Gutiérrez, Mateo Hernandez, William Fonque, Cristina Consuegra, Juliana Van Hemelryck, Manuela del Alma, Natalia Salamanca, Lobadys Pérez
The Architectures of Planetary Well-Being symposium series of site-specific live events brings together intercultural and interdisciplinary points of view intended to expand discourse and praxis, as well as to support open-mindedness and mutual learning. Previous symposia have come together in São Paulo (BR), London (UK). They are experimental inquiries into the values, practices, and belief systems that express and protect the interconnectedness of all life, and that we engage through the concept of architectures of planetary well-being.