August 26, 2025

Hunter International Forum at MASP

Many Voices, One Forum

_location: MASP - São Paulo, Brazil

The first edition of the Hunter International Forum (HIF) felt like a milestone. Held on the symbolic stage of MASP, it marked the moment Architecture Hunter moved from screens to a live room - bringing its community together to learn, share, and celebrate design. The forum also strengthened a clear new pillar: education, making space for deeper conversations and collective growth.

From an Instagram page in 2013 to a global platform, the journey has always been guided by three pillars - inspire, inform, entertain - and by the belief that showing the “why” behind projects helps everyone value architecture more. Over two days, that spirit was tangible: stories of process, responsibility, and culture gave weight to each talk and panel.

Across the program, speakers tied ideas to place and practice. Douglas Tolaine (Perkins&Will) opened with “Architecture in motion: sustainability and well-being as drivers of innovation in the age of artificial intelligence" reminding us that AI is a tool for imagination: “AI won’t draw for us… it will help us discover possibilities”. Gustavo Penna, in “Architecture, Drawing and the Word,” distilled craft and care: “Drawing is thought; the word is a bridge”. Studio MK27 let us peek “from the inside out,” noting that “you cannot be specialized in thinking - architecture is synthesis,” and that “a house is finished when life starts to happen there”.

Innovation met construction with Rodrigo Vilas-Boas and Julião Pinto Leite, who argued that “3D printing is not a niche; it’s a new layer in construction”. Emanuel Christ spoke to culture and context in “The Museum and the City”: “We want the museum linked to the life of the city - to connect our buildings with the life of the city”. And Chad Oppenheim pushed for emotion in practice: “Architecture must make you feel; when you feel nothing, the project is wrong”.

Day two expanded the lens. “Legacy and Authorship in Brazilian Design,” with Rodrigo Ohtake, Zanini de Zanine, and Lissa Carmona, looked at how families and institutions protect and project design heritage. Adam Kurdahl’s “São Paulo 2035! Global South, World Capital” set an urgent tone: “We have ten years to transform São Paulo… it’s time to talk about cities for all beings”. In “Social Architecture: Practices that Generate Impact” Lourenço Gimenes, Caroline Martins, and Bruno Bordon underlined shared responsibility: “The problem is collective - and each of us must act, from our place”. Simon Marius Zehnder, "Le Corbusier's Promenade Architecturale: Tracing the legacy of modernism", offered a deceptively simple principle: “A ramp connects floors; stairs separate”. From MVRDV, Cosimo Scotucci and Lorenzo Mattozzi framed design as agency: “The idea is to change the status quo - not apply the standard”. And Paulo Jacobsen, reflecting on fifty years of practice, put it beautifully: “Architecture is the bridge between technology and art”.

Looking ahead, the vision is bold and simple. This was the first of many; the goal is to make HIF a yearly meeting, and - one day - to take it to other cities, carrying Brazilian voices abroad and

credits

_article written by Daniela Moreira da Silva
_film by Architecture Hunter
_image scroll by Ana Ferriani