Main Stage of MuyunaFest
by Espacio Común
Iquitos, Peru
Project details
Year
2025
project year
2024
building area
40 m²
project website
Location
Team credits
architects
- Espacio Común -
Daniel Canchan,
Paula Villar.
project team
Beatriz Pacual,
Marta Bautista,
Rafael Silvano,
Segundo Salinas,
Jhon Mashacuri,
Paulo Navarro,
Jose Aris,
Segundo Braga,
Livia Silvano,
Jorge Chilicahua.
contributing partners
Sacha Cine,
Sauntr Foundation,
Muyuna Project.
Located in the amphibious neighbourhood of Belén, Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, the Main Stage of MuyunaFest was conceived as the heart of Muyuna Fest – an international floating film festival that pays tribute to the world’s rainforests and their Indigenous peoples. The festival encourages audiovisual creation within the jungle and builds networks of exchange grounded in local knowledge and environmental awareness. Belén, a neighbourhood long stigmatized by poverty and precarious living conditions, faces extreme water level fluctuations that turn streets into rivers for months at a time. Here, homes float on logs or rise on stilts, forming a dynamic landscape of adaptation, creativity and resilience.
The floating stage draws inspiration from this vernacular architecture. Its slender wooden columns and beams echo Belén’s ‘tall houses’, translating everyday construction methods into an ephemeral structure that feels both familiar and celebratory. The stage offers a sensorial experience intimately connected to water, sound and movement: audiences arrive by canoe, their boats gently swaying as light from the screen reflects on the river. Locally sourced wood, shaped by hand using simple tools, forms the framework. Imperfections – visible knots, uneven cuts and subtle asymmetries – are not corrected but embraced, conveying honesty, vitality and collective authorship. Lateral coverings act as the stage’s ‘clothing’, incorporating patterns co-created in workshops with neighbourhood children and inspired by Amazonian visual culture. These decorative layers turn the structure into a collective work of art that speaks of belonging and shared imagination.
The project emerged from Espacio Común’s long-standing relationship with the Belén community. Rather than imposing a predetermined design, the architects acted as companions, translating ideas developed through dialogue and collaboration into architectural form. Model-making workshops with children generated key spatial concepts, while residents took part in every stage of the process – as builders, cooks and boat drivers. What began as a temporary installation evolved into a multi-layered cultural project, empowering the community to reclaim and reinterpret their relationship with water and public space.
Social impact was matched by ecological sensitivity. The project’s material palette – regional timber, sawmill offcuts, canes from nearby farms and sticks typically used for firewood – reflects a deep understanding of the circular economy already embedded in Amazonian life. The stage’s modular design allows it to be dismantled, reused or reassembled, ensuring that materials continue to serve the community long after the festival ends. By integrating local construction techniques, such as lightweight joinery and elevated platforms, the structure respects the fluctuating river landscape while avoiding unnecessary environmental disruption.
The Floating Jungle thus becomes both a cultural platform and a statement of ecological coexistence. It demonstrates that temporary structures can leave a lasting social legacy, not through permanence, but through participation and adaptability. During the festival, the stage hosted film screenings, performances and workshops; afterwards, it continued to function as a playground, floating dock and informal gathering place. This dual life – ephemeral yet enduring – captures the spirit of Belén, where architecture and nature are in constant dialogue.
Beyond its physical form, the project offers a model for architecture as process rather than product. It combines contemporary design thinking with traditional knowledge, expanding the boundaries of both disciplines. The collaborative and interdisciplinary approach of Espacio Común – linking art, architecture and ethnography – demonstrates how small-scale interventions can catalyse cultural pride, environmental awareness and social connection. The Floating Jungle is not simply a stage but a stage for transformation: a site where collective creativity, ecological intelligence and architectural experimentation converge on water to celebrate the resilience of life in the Amazon.
The prize money will fund the design and construction of the main stage for the third edition of Muyuna Fest, a floating film festival in the Amazon, taking place in May 2026. Conceived as a temporary structure, it will later be transformed into a permanent public space for play and gathering in Belén, Iquitos. Built with local carpenters and youth, it will provide training in sustainable construction while strengthening community capacity and cultural identity.
- Information for the project text was provided by Espacio Común -
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Advisory Committee Statement
‘Main Stage of MuyunaFest’ receives the award for Local Scale for its inventive and poetic creation of a cultural and social floating hub during a community-led festival. Responding intelligently to the realities of flooding, the project transforms an everyday challenge into a spatial opportunity. Built from locally sourced materials and crafted with the participation of Belén’s residents, the structure embodies the adaptive ingenuity of Amazonian architecture. Designed by Espacio Común for Muyuna Fest, a floating jungle film festival, the stage brings cinema and culture directly to river communities, where audiences watch films from their boats in a ‘boat-inn’ setting – a sustainable reimagining of the drive-in. Both the collective and the project merit international recognition for the inspiring impact of this temporary structure, which is intended to be adapted into a permanent public space after the next edition of the festival.