From forest to cloud, from ancient to contemporary.

As our global society plunges deeper into the Anthropocene, architecture is faced with an ethical dilemma: why build more? And, if we can't avoid building, how should we build? These must be the starting point for any new design.

The design of this exhibition addresses this dilemma through an investigation of the ways in which humanity, in non-Western societies, has produced environments with positive impact. For centuries, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest have organized the forest to provide abundant sources of food, building materials, medicines, and artistic supplements. These strategies are intertwined with a larger worldview in which so-called "natural elements" such as rivers, mountains, plants, and animals are considered living entities with identity, personality, and agency. As Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa states in his masterpiece *The Fall of the Sky*, "the white man is destroying the beauty of our forests." Amazonian civilization is guided by aesthetic experience, as beauty (the plurality of sounds, smells, colors, shapes, tastes, and textures) is a sign of a living and predictable environment—where humans are merely one of the agents producing objects and events.