Arquiteturas do Bem-Estar Planetário Considering spatial practice through lenses of reparation, temporality, and involvement.
September 19, 2025
São Paulo, Brazil
Unfolding in three acts across two days in September 2025, Arquiteturas do Bem-Estar Planetário brought together a group of scholars and practitioners to share keynotes, presentations, performances, and panel-style conversations. The program held considerations of spatial practice through the lenses of reparation and involvement, as well as reorientating the temporality through which we perceive and create the built environment. Invited participants offered embodied knowledges of collectivity, ecology, territory, design, and architecture. Their presences and perspectives engaged, and were enhanced by, the space’s deep relationship to the intersections of performance and revolutionary imagination.
The symposium was hosted by Teat(r)o Oficina, founded in 1958 and based since 1961 at the same address in the Bixiga neighborhood of São Paulo. Renowned for its significance in the history of experimental theater and performance art, the architectural design of the theater building and the company’s artistic language - both listed as tangible and intangible heritage and inseparable from one another - are in constant transformation. Teat(r)o Oficina was officially designated a protected landmark in 1981 by the Council for the Defense of Historical, Archaeological, Artistic, and Touristic Heritage (CONDEPHAAT).
Featuring Maria Luiza de Barros, Ailton Krenak, Paulo Tavares, Associação Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona, Ana Flávia Magalhães Pinto, Leda Maria Martins, Mãe Celina de Xangô, Rose Afefé, Maya Quilolo, Gabriela de Matos, Audrey Carolini, Amaro Freitas, Tainá de Paula, Jerá Guarani, Maria Alice Pereira da Silva, Marcella Arruda, Sem Muros, Palmares Laboratório-Ação, RUÍNA Arquitetura, Grupo ][ Fresta, Joice Berth
The Architectures of Planetary Well-Being symposium series of site-specific live events bring together intercultural and interdisciplinary points of view intended to expand the discourse and praxis, as well as to support open-mindedness and mutual learning. Previous symposia have come together in Bogotá (CO), 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.