Varella and his peers know that even concrete and glass are ultimately ephemeral, that there’s no human tool strong enough to reverse environmental degradation. You can pull a beach from the ocean, but there’s no guarantee the ocean won’t take it back. As he points out, “There’s no such thing as permanent architecture.”

“There’s a phrase, ‘To step lightly on the ground,’ that we like to borrow from Ailton Krenak,” Ayako says, referring to the 70-year-old activist and intellectual who recently became the first Indigenous thinker inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letters. “That [doesn’t] necessarily mean delicate buildings or light structures,” she adds. “For me, it’s about paying attention to where you are.”