Leonardo Zanatta Signs the Masterplan for the First Brazilian Architecture Biennial
Based on the concept of “Invisible Borders”, the architect won a unanimous competition and signs the masterplan for the Pavilhão das Culturas Brasileiras, in Ibirapuera Park
From March 25 to April 30, 2026, São Paulo hosts an unprecedented event. The first edition of the Brazilian Architecture Biennial (BAB) will occupy the Pavilhão das Culturas Brasileiras, PACUBRA, a building designed by Oscar Niemeyer in Ibirapuera Park that had remained closed for years and will now be returned to the public. Inspired by international models such as the Venice Biennale, yet dedicated exclusively to Brazilian production, BAB emerges with a clear purpose: to democratize access to architecture and bring it closer to the everyday lives of Brazilians.
The masterplan organizes 20,000 square meters of exhibition area, making it the largest architecture event in the country’s history in terms of spatial extent. BAB’s structure includes one pavilion for each of Brazil’s 26 states, as well as the Federal District and an exclusive space for the city of São Paulo. Each environment measures approximately 100 square meters and is designed to translate the multiple expressions of Brazilian architecture. The design establishes a grid in which architects may freely intervene within their pavilions while maintaining a unified external visual identity.
To give form to this ambition, the organization launched a competition for the event’s masterplan, which was unanimously won by Leonardo Zanatta, a 31-year-old architect from Rio Grande do Sul. “There was unanimity regarding our proposal, which is rare,” Zanatta acknowledges.
Invisible Borders
The concept that won over the jury ultimately became the central theme of the Biennial itself. “Invisible Borders” proposes dissolving the political divisions that organize Brazilian territory, North, South, Southeast, Midwest and Northeast, and replacing them with demarcations that exist independently of human action. “We proposed imagining a country where what separates us are not walls, but only natural elements: topography, rivers, climate,” explains Zanatta.
The architect proposed grouping the states according to natural elements: hydrography, topography and vegetation. The result is a reading through biomes: Amazon, Cerrado, Caatinga, Atlantic Forest, Pampa and Pantanal, borders that fauna and flora organically respect without needing to be taught. “The biome is a border that animals and vegetation have learned to respect on their own. No one needed to teach them that,” says Zanatta. “We wanted to bring this concept into the Biennial.”
The proposal revealed overlaps that often go unnoticed on the political map. The city of São Paulo, for example, is entirely located within the Atlantic Forest, while the state of São Paulo also includes an area crossed by the Cerrado. Under the logic of biomes, capital and countryside belong to different territories and will be presented in different pavilions within BAB.
“Tocantins moves closer to the Cerrado; Rio Grande do Sul rises in the Pampas; Bahia is stitched across three regions; São Paulo belongs to the Atlantic Forest,” describes the architect. This reorganization breaks with demographic borders and introduces what the project calls a “living geography”, a territory of shared belonging.
The spatial organization also draws from another source: street markets, particularly the Feira de Caruaru, a Brazilian intangible heritage site. “Our masterplan is inspired by the market, not as a decorative metaphor, but as a living structure of social, political and spatial organization,” says Zanatta.
The architect and his team studied how market vendors occupy urban space organically, setting up their stalls during one shift and dismantling them in the next, leaving the street clean as if nothing had happened. “The Feira de Caruaru is not merely a place of commerce; it is a collective body in constant mutation. It rises daily through stalls, tarps, poles, improvised structures, flows and voices. It is architecture that is assembled and disassembled, that adapts to time, climate and necessity.”
This logic of temporary occupation guided the distribution of the pavilions inside PACUBRA. “It is this popular and collective intelligence that BAB evokes as a project. A market of territories, where each pavilion is a stall, each material is a choice, and each space is a stage for aesthetic, political and affective encounters.”
The exhibition route was designed to begin from above. Visitors enter through the ground floor, ascend the ramp and begin their journey on the second level, where the Pampa, Atlantic Forest, Cerrado and Pantanal biomes are located. There, Rio Grande do Sul opens the route on its own, representing the only state entirely located within the Southern Grasslands. It is followed by the Atlantic Forest pavilions, Santa Catarina, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Espírito Santo and Alagoas, and then by the Cerrado, with Minas Gerais, Goiás, Brasília, Tocantins, Maranhão, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul.
Descending to the first floor, visitors pass through the Caatinga, Bahia, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco and Sergipe, and conclude with the Amazonian states: Amazonas, Acre, Rondônia, Roraima, Amapá and Pará.
The project also includes gathering spaces distributed along the route. On the first floor, a restaurant with two dining rooms connected to the kitchen and to the state pavilions offers a pause for visitors. In the external Arena, a bar and multipurpose space complement the infrastructure. The official BAB shop marks the final point of the route.
Between the pavilions, the masterplan introduces what it calls “breathing spaces”, strategic places for connection, waiting and contemplation, supported by benches and lightweight canopy structures. These pauses were conceived so visitors can absorb what they have seen before moving forward. “We wanted this Biennial not to feel so academic,” says Zanatta. “Other biennials already occupy that territory and end up reaching a very specific audience. We wanted to present architecture in an accessible way for people outside the field.”
A Decentralized Process
The most significant difference in relation to other events in the sector lies in the selection process for the professionals involved. Each state selected its own representative through competitions organized by the Archa platform, without interference from a centralized curatorial body. “We did not want a centralized curatorship to define what each state should present about itself,” says Zanatta. “Brazil cannot be visually cohesive. We are extremely diverse.”
The project manifesto translates this position in one sentence: “BAB does not propose neutral solutions; it proposes listening. It does not design from above; it designs with.” Under this logic, the pavilions “are not abstract buildings. They assume their condition as sertanejo, riverine, pampean, Amazonian.”
Horizontality was a non-negotiable principle. All states received spaces of the same size, regardless of population or economic relevance.
Tectonics in Exile: A Reflection on Brazilian Materials
In addition to the masterplan, Zanatta is also responsible for the event’s entrance hall and ticketing area, a space that will function as a large gallery. There, “Tectonics in Exile” will be installed, a work nearly 20 meters long and 4 meters wide that simulates the skyline of a city built from Brazilian materials: earth, stones and Amazonian woods.
The installation carries an important reflection. “Brazil exports many raw materials that are extremely refined, but that do not remain here,” observes Zanatta. “Stones extracted in the Northeast are shipped abroad as raw blocks, processed in Italy, stamped as ‘made in Italy’ and remain there. Often people do not even know that they are Brazilian mineral resources.”
The architect cites Amazonite, a stone extracted in Ceará that clads most Tiffany stores around the world and is commercialized by an Italian company, as an example of how national materials gain notoriety without having their origin recognized. Visitors will be able to interact with the work by sitting on the smaller pieces positioned along its edges.
The space will also feature two works by artist Luiz Escañuela. The series chosen by Zanatta uses old maps of the Captaincy of São Paulo from the 17th century, printed on truck canvas and painted with clay in tones that evoke human skin. “Territory is also skin, it is body. There is something very visceral in the works,” says Zanatta of Escañuela’s practice, an artist from the new generation and roughly the same age as the architect.
A New Narrative for Architecture
The choice of the Pavilhão das Culturas Brasileiras was not accidental. Niemeyer’s building replicates the plan of the Museu Afro and had been closed for years, in a state of abandonment. BAB marks its reopening and will be the first major event with the Ibirapuera marquee once again accessible to the public, allowing visitors to arrive at the Biennial through this iconic route.
“It is always an honor to intervene in a work by Niemeyer,” says Zanatta, who previously produced an exhibition in the main void of the Museu Oscar Niemeyer in Curitiba. “It is important for access to be democratic, for people to be able to consume culture. This is a very important guiding idea for us.”
The architect sees the Biennial as an opportunity to broaden the reach of the profession. “This Biennial comes to show that architecture can also propose solutions on a social level, that it is part of people’s everyday lives.”
The project manifesto summarizes the conceptual ambition of the proposal: “We want to imagine an architecture that is not a monument to property or power, but a flow: where what was once built to exclude is now transformed into a common, open, inhabitable space. An architecture that does not summon the desire for appropriation, but the desire for life in common.”
The expectation is that BAB will inspire other events in the sector to adopt more democratic selection processes, opening space for young professionals and practitioners from different regions of the country. “When we make the architectural environment more democratic, we strengthen the profession as a whole.”
Credits
Authors: Leonardo Zanatta
Team: Lucas Carilli, Nathalia Wehmuth, Henrique Azevedo, Davi Erbs, Anna Schmutzler
Execution: Instituto Bienal de Arquitetura Brasileira
Supporting brands: Duratex, Estones, Vedac, Taipal, Tapeçaria Italiana
