The "Yaku" Water Museum in Quito has several exhibitions on different topics related to water. In 2022, the idea was to create an exhibition based on the Somos Páramo research carried out by Agronomes & Vétérinaires Sans Frontières, a local study on the sustainable management of the Páramos (a mountain ecosystem that develops above the Andean forests at altitudes of up to 3,000 metres above sea level).

We have been entrusted with the conception, museological design, museographic planning and installation of this exhibition, which is housed in six former water tanks for the city of Quito, now used as the museum's exhibition spaces.

Our action focuses on translating extensive academic research into concrete messages that can be easily communicated to a diverse audience. We work with different scales of information, in order to accommodate different age groups, as well as the different dynamics and temporalities of each visit. We organise the space in a way that allows for the construction of each visitor's own discourse.

We took advantage of the spatiality and materiality of the exhibition containers, the old water tanks made up of six concrete vaults connected by small openings. We proposed to free them from any covering and show them as they were built, taking advantage of the penumbra and frivolity of the raw concrete and using the memory of its use in the exhibition discourse.

Somos páramo, agua que vincula territorios" (We are marshland, water that connects territories) seeks to convey the following key messages to its visitors:

• The páramo is a biodiverse ecosystem that is not uniform, and in its particularities more than ten types of páramo can be identified throughout the Ecuadorian territory. These areas have been modified over time and currently there are a large number of populations, animals and plants that inhabit the páramo.

• The populations that inhabit the Ecuadorian Páramo territory have gone through different historical processes of struggle and resistance.

• Currently, the Ecuadorian Páramo, which provides fresh water for the whole country, is under constant anthropic and natural threats, which the exhibition seeks to polemicise against.

The elements of the museum are organised in the first 5 rooms around 5 themes that culminate in the sixth room, dedicated to the educational processes developed by the museum.

1. The Páramo and its representations
2. Who lives in the Páramo?
3. Use and collective responsibility
4. Community management and the role of the people in water management
5. Páramo and gender

The content of the research is materialised in various elements that make up the six spaces. These elements seek to organise the space and the ways in which it is traversed, as well as to convey information through their very presence and materiality. We use wood, translucent fabrics, mesh, embroidery, reflective materials, straw, etc. Our aim is to transport the visitor to the Páramo from a scenographic point of view. To allow interaction with each element, making the visitor part of the exhibition.