Architectures and Ecologies of Amazonia

Fritz Steiner 

Vanessa Grossman

Catherine Seavitt

Fritz Steiner is dean and Paley Professor of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. In 2019, he co-founded The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology with Richard Weller, Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture. He is a Fellow of both the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, and a Scholar at the Penn Institute for Urban Research. 

Vanessa Grossman is Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at the Department of Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Her work addresses the intersections of architecture with ideology, housing and governments, with a special focus on global practices in Cold War-era Europe and Latin America. 

Catherine Seavitt is Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, where she is the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism. She is also the faculty co-director of The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her scholarship and design work examines the entanglement of public space and public health through the lens of ecology, policy, and novel plant science.

William Balée (in person) and Paulo Tavares (via Zoom)

Clark Erickson

Kristina Lyons

Túlio Andrade (via Zoom)

Moderated by Marco Salazar Valle

William Balée is Professor at the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork dealing with forest peoples in the Brazilian Amazon, Ecuadorian Amazon, and peninsular Malaysia. 

Clark Erickson is Professor Emeritus at the the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1974, Erickson's Andean and Amazonian research focuses on the contribution of archaeology to understanding the complex human history of the environment and cultural activities that have shaped the Earth.

Kristina Lyons is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2004, she has conducted participatory action and ethnographic research with rural and urban communities in the Colombian Amazon. She is the legal representative of the NGO Colectivo Ríos y Reconciliación and guardian of a civil society nature reserve, La Hojarasca, in the Andean-Amazonian foothills of Colombia.

Túlio Andrade is the head for Climate Negotiation at Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a 2024-25 Perry World House Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as climate negotiator from 2010 to 2018 and had postings in London and Tokyo.

Paulo Tavares is an architect, author, educator at the University of Brasília. He also leads the spatial advocacy agency autonoma. His practice dwells at the frontiers between architecture, visual cultures, and advocacy. His curatorial project Terra, in collaboration with Gabriela de Matos, was awarded the Golden Lion for best national participation at La Biennale di Venecia 2023.

Marco Salazar Valle is a Ph.D. student in the History and Theory of Architecture at the Department of Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

Catherine Seavitt

Isabella de Bonis

Fernando Luiz Lara

Glenn H. Shepard Jr.

Moderated by Dagny Elise Carlsson

Isabella de Bonis is an Amazonian Ph.D. Candidate in the History and Foundations of Architecture and Urbanism Program at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo and a member of the Núcleo Arquitetura Moderna na Amazônia (NAMA).

Fernando Luiz Lara is a Professor of Architectural History and Theory at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. Lara works on theorizing spaces of the Americas with an emphasis on the dissemination of architecture and planning ideas beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries. In his several publications, Prof. Lara has discussed the modern and contemporary architecture of our continent, its meaning, context, and social-economic insertion. 

Glenn H. Shepard Jr. is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University As an ethnobotanist, medical anthropologist, and filmmaker, he has carried out fieldwork for over thirty years among diverse indigenous peoples around the world, particularly in Amazonia.

Dagny Elise Carlsson, a member of the Cherokee Nation and Shawnee Tribe, is pursuing dual Master's degrees in Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Her work is focused on how Indigenous design methodologies can be implemented to shape our shared future in the Americas.

Vanda Witoto

Supported by The Perry World House International Grant Program 

Vanda Witoto is a climate activist, educator, and Indigenous leader from the Witoto people. She lives in Parque das Tribos, the first urban neighborhood in Manaus inhabited by Indigenous communities, where 2,500 people from over 30 different ethnic groups reside.A strong advocate for sustainability, she champions policies that not only protect the environment but also uphold the rights of Indigenous peoples. She is the founder of Instituto Witoto.

Rodrigo Simon de Moraes

Marcio José de Araujo Costa

Carolina Angel Botero

Priscilla Brasil

Moderated by Clarisse Figueiredo de Queiroz 

Rodrigo Simon de Moraes is a postdoctoral research associate with the Brazil LAB at Princeton University contributing to the research hubs Engaging Indigenous Ecologies of Knowledges and Decolonizing the Arts, as well as leading science communication initiatives.

Marcio José de Araujo Costa is a Psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor, who was a 2023–2024 Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Latin America and Latinx Studies. His current research is centered on The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert.

Carolina Angel Botero is a 2023–2025 Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies. Her current research aims to bridge law, science, and anthropology, focusing on natural sciences' definitions and approximations of nature.

Priscilla Brasil is an Amazonian filmmaker and executive producer born in Belém do Pará. She holds a diverse academic background with a degree in architecture, business, and communication, and is a Ph.D. Candidate in Post-colonialism and Global Citizenship at the University of Coimbra.

Clarisse Figueiredo de Queiroz is a Ph.D. student in the History and Theory of Architecture and Presidential Fellow at the Department of Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

No More History Without Us: A Manifesto (76 min.)

A documentary by Priscilla Brasil

Casual conversation.

Emanuele Coccia

Emanuele Coccia is a philosopher and Associate Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Known for centering the vegetal world—and, more broadly, the living world—within philosophical inquiry, he is the author of The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture (Polity Press, 2018). His most recent work, Philosophy of the Home: Domestic Space and Happiness (Penguin, 2024), shows how the architecture of home has shaped, and continues to shape, our psyches and our societies, before then masterfully leading us towards a more creative, ecological way of dwelling in the world.