The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has recently launched a documentary and exhibition titled With an Acre, marking the third and final chapter of its Groundwork series. This series delves into how contemporary architects are cultivating alternative practices to address the ecological crisis. The documentary specifically follows Brazilian architect Carla Juaçaba as she works in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where she is developing pavilions on a coffee plantation—home to a collective that resists extractive industrial agriculture.
With an Acre explores the role of architects in regions facing land regeneration challenges and unstable climate conditions. It also examines the tools available to smallholder farmers as they cope with the environmental and social consequences of colonial settlement, urbanization, and industrialization. Through Juaçaba’s work, the documentary brings attention to how architecture can support both ecological and social resilience in these contested landscapes.
Carla Juaçaba, an independent architect based in Rio de Janeiro since 2000, has built a practice focused on both cultural projects and private commissions. She won the inaugural ArcVision Women and Architecture International Prize in 2013 and the AREA Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award in 2018. In With an Acre, we see her working alongside the “Flor de Café” collective, a group of smallholder farmers in Minas Gerais. Together, they aim to create a museum and community space that serves as a platform for farmers to reclaim their land and produce, moving away from the exploitative practices of the past.
The design of the structures Juaçaba is creating—minimal and elevated—draws inspiration from the temporality of Indigenous collective dwellings and the distinctive billboards dotting the expansive rural landscape. The goal is to build lightly, minimizing the impact on the land while offering a place for knowledge exchange and supporting the collective’s ongoing efforts. According to Juaçaba, “Flor de Café has been transformational in the lives of generations of farmers, who now understand that they should own their products, rather than selling them off as they used to, and that they should create their own value.”
Both the community pavilion and the museum are symbolic acts of resistance against the legacy of extractive agriculture. As Juaçaba explains, the museum is envisioned in alignment with the collective's founder, Milena Rodrigues, who aims to retell the history of Brazil through the lens of coffee—the very crop that has caused the destruction of its forests. Since the introduction of arabica coffee to Brazil 300 years ago, coffee cultivation has been built on the backs of enslaved and later immigrant labor, expanding into an industry now occupying over two million hectares. This extractivist history has played a significant role in both ecological devastation and deepening social inequalities.
Juaçaba’s architectural work directly supports the movement for agrarian reform, regenerative agriculture, and forest conservation. As she sees it, architecture can serve as a “practical scaffold for resilience,” helping these communities to adapt and thrive in the face of ecological destruction.
The With an Acre exhibition, curated by Francesco Garutti and Irene Chin, and the accompanying 45-minute documentary directed by Joshua Frank, capture the aspirations of the project through the voices of collective members, while the exhibition showcases Juaçaba’s ongoing research. This project is part of CCA’s Groundwork series, which began in May 2024 with Into the Island, following architect Xu Tiantian’s work on Meizhou Island in China. The second chapter, To Build Law, focused on bplus.xyz and station.plus’ initiative HouseEurope!, aimed at shifting cultural and legislative norms towards the preservation and rehabilitation of existing European building stock.
Through her collaboration with the Flor de Café collective, Juaçaba demonstrates how architects can contribute to local sustainability efforts and how architecture, at its best, can be a catalyst for ecological and social change. With these projects, she highlights a future where architecture goes beyond aesthetics and functionality to become a true agent of resilience in the face of global ecological crises.