Escola Sem Muros (School Without Walls) emerges from a desire for other possible practices and alternative ways of learning and relating: with one another, with the walls of the city, and with the learning potential inherent in each territory and individual. It brings together people who have joined for a common purpose: to go beyond physical, social, and political barriers, and to open cracks in both urban brutality and the educational formats that segregate worlds. Its methodology is based on engagement (valuing local identity), construction (the building site as a learning platform), and care (shared management of public spaces and care structures), proposing a process of holistic education.
An architecture and urban permaculture collective, the group seeks to collaboratively produce knowledge grounded in reality and to democratize tools to build autonomy. They believe in the practice of a process-based, participatory, aesthetic, ethical, and political architecture, where assemblages, process, and modes of production matter—viewing production not merely as material, but as a reflection of who makes it, who uses it, how it is made, and why. Their work began at the Espaço Cultural Jardim Damasceno, located in Brasilândia, in the northern zone of São Paulo.
“The sky belongs to the birds, the sea to the fish, and the earth to the people. Sociocultural territories are sacred:
they must be respected and honored as such; they are not private property, they have no owner.
Territory is where there is belonging, community.” - Casé Angatu Xukuru Tupinambá
