UN-Habitat Honors Brazil's First Municipal Indigenous Village in Maricá

By Grace Kim

The 2026 UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour Award has recognized Aldeia do Espraiado – Tekoa Ara Hovy in Maricá, Rio de Janeiro state — Brazil's first Indigenous village created by a municipality. Thirteen Guarani Mbyá families relocated there in early 2025 after living inside a state park without secure land tenure or basic services.

The settlement now offers traditional homes, a bilingual school, a health post, a cultural center, a community kitchen, and water infrastructure. UN-Habitat cited it as part of its international selection of initiatives addressing adequate housing and sustainable urban development. The project paired municipal investment with traditional building practices, developed with community participation.

It's a rare case where housing policy, land security, and cultural continuity landed in the same brief. And it wasn't the only Brazilian story this month where the built environment did social work.

How do campuses and planned cities shape collective life?

Two editorials widened the lens. From the Classroom to the Courtyard: How 10 Brazilian Universities Rethink the Learning Space starts with the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo, designed by Vilanova Artigas and Carlos Cascaldi in 1961, then surveys ten projects that treat the campus as urban terrain. They include AT Arquitetura's Unisinos campus in Porto Alegre, which fills an entire city block, and Lins Arquitetos Associados' educational pavilions at Unileão in Juazeiro do Norte, where gardens and communal spaces stitch new buildings to old ones.

Drawing a New City: Brasília, Fordlândia, and Ciudad Guayana compares two Brazilian planning experiments: Henry Ford's late-1920s Fordlândia, an American industrial town transplanted into the Amazon, and Brasília, with Lúcio Costa's monumental plan and Oscar Niemeyer's civic architecture. Fordlândia's imported models and imposed routines clashed with local conditions and workers' lives. Brasília gave physical form to a national modernization project.

What are the featured projects?

Doutor Leite Lopes State Airport / Bacco Arquitetos Associados. In Ribeirão Preto, a 10,840-square-meter expansion wraps the existing terminal in a glued laminated timber (glulam) structure — a material rarely used in Brazilian airport infrastructure. Prefabricated components sped up assembly while the terminal kept operating. Cross-ventilation, natural lighting, water features, and vegetation address the hot climate. The project adds an urban plan anticipating hotel and commercial development around the retained runway.

Jeronimo Faria Lima Building / Perkins&Will São Paulo. This 20,500-square-meter commercial building at Brigadeiro Faria Lima Avenue and Jeronimo da Veiga Street rejects the conventional office tower formula. A sunken plaza with cafés, social spaces, and collaborative areas sits at the first basement level; a pedestrian bridge links it to the main lobby. Two stacked volumes split at a landscaped garden level, and vegetation spreads across terraces and arrival areas.

Rouxinol House / Sergio Sampaio Archi + Tectônica. Built on a 50-meter slope in Jacareí with views of the Jaguari River reservoir, this 440-square-meter residence dodges more than 300 surveyed trees. Three overlapping levels follow a 9-by-9 modular grid with a 3.80-meter span, resting glulam beams and columns on steel pilotis. Photovoltaic generation, solar water heating, and underground biodigesters are planned.

Who won what this month?

Estúdio Módulo won the competition for Itaú Cultural's new headquarters on Avenida Paulista. Partners Marcus Vinicius Damon, Guilherme Bravin, and Érica Tomasoni proposed interconnected galleries, a theater, an auditorium, studios, and educational facilities around a public plaza. The façade pairs white brise-soleils with colorful interior surfaces, drawing on Brazilian Concrete Art.

Landscape studio Licuri took two distinctions at the 2026 CITY'SCAPE Award in Milan. Parque Viva Energia, in Vivapark Porto Belo, Santa Catarina, earned joint first prize for a park built around two constructed lakes supporting water retention and flood control. Clube Náutico de Araraquara received a special mention plus the FSB Forum Italy Sport&Play Special Prize; its 664 hectares hold preserved Cerrado vegetation and more than 400 tree and shrub species.

What does the walkability diagnosis change?

The Caminhabilidade Institute's Walkability and Pedestrian Mobility Diagnosis in Brazil 2026, produced with the National Secretariat for Urban Mobility at the Ministry of Cities, quantifies the gap between how people move and what cities build. Nearly four in ten daily trips happen exclusively on foot. Yet 14.8% of Brazilians live on streets without sidewalks, and 64.6% live where sidewalks have obstacles.

The report feeds into the National Urban Mobility Plan (PlanMob Brasil) and argues for walkability as a strategic component of mobility policy. With a UN-recognized Indigenous village and a timber airport expansion sharing the same news cycle, the month's throughline is clear: Brazilian practice is testing what infrastructure owes its public — on foot, on campus, and on Avenida Paulista.