The process of designing and building the Crown of Iemanjá

Between technical knowledge and living territorry

Abstract

The Crown of Iemanjá consists of a small 9m² bamboo structure, designed and built collectively. The project is the result of collaboration between various actors and collectives, in particular the extension, teaching, and research project Floresta Cidade of FAU-UFRJ, the Grande Companhia Brasileira de Mystérios e Novidades (Great Brazilian Company of Mysteries and Novelties), Quilombo do Feital, and artistic collectives from Rio de Janeiro. The construction involved an unconventional treatment of bamboo, through its immersion in the waters of Guanabara Bay, in a ritualistic gesture, marking the work with countercolonial and collaborative perspectives from the partner territories. The experience of designing and executing the Crown of Iemanjá expands pedagogical, epistemic, and cultural boundaries, seeking a participatory dialogue with other forms of life, such as Guanabara Bay. This attitude, not uncommon in Afro-indigenous perspectives in Brazil, is largely absent from the ecological debate on designing and building in dialogue with the climate crisis. Thus, the efforts undertaken in this project also debate the notion of ecology linked to construction, showing the importance of a sensitive dimension of relationship with non-human ways of life. The experience is therefore configured as an essayistic, participatory, collective, and holistic experience of ways of being, inhabiting, and building a forest-city.