In 2018, reports emerged that Harvard University channeled more than $450 million through subsidiaries to invest in farmland in Brazil’s Cerrado region. While much attention has been given to the slash-and-burn destruction of the Amazon, the Cerrado is being destroyed for agriculture at a much greater rate, with similar repercussions for climate change, species loss, and infringement of indigenous rights.

Harvard’s investment has proved unprofitable and highly controversial, and now the endowment corporation is struggling to back out. This design for a new satellite campus proposes that, rather than wash its hands of the situation, the university take ownership of this mistake.



This project proposes a new center dedicated to two areas of study: regenerative agriculture techniques for better land management, and conservation biology to restore the degraded Cerrado biome.

The institute forms two quadrangles, straddling the lands used by the two disciplines. In the lower yard, students work in laboratories, greenhouses and barns. In the upper, students discuss, observe, and reflect on the work in pavilions on the restored Cerrado land. Dividing the two, students live under the roof of one longhouse. The buildings use a generic light gauge construction system, drawing on both the formal techniques used in the indigenous architecture of the Cerrado region, and the scalar bravado of an “American” architecture.

Right or wrong, this project asks the university to act with boldness, out in the open. As an educational, rather than a financial investment, Harvard could use their ill-begotten property to become a world leader in the kind of land use issues that will become increasingly important in years to come.