Cânions

The masterplan and architectural project developed by Plantar for Aparados da Serra National Park and Serra Geral National Park is grounded in a central principle: enhancing the visitor experience without displacing the primacy of the landscape. Located within one of the country’s most sensitive and emblematic ecosystems, the parks demand a delicate, reversible approach to occupation—deeply anchored in a careful reading of the territory.

The work was developed within the framework of the new public-use concession, in coordination with ICMBio and the concessionaire Urbia Cânions Verdes. Its objective was to structure architectural and operational interventions capable of improving service quality, organizing visitor flows, increasing length of stay, and supporting environmentally responsible visitation management.

The masterplan recognizes the parks as a continuous territorial system, articulating visitor hubs, access points, trails, viewpoints, and support areas into a coherent spatial narrative. Occupation does not occur through isolated objects, but through sequences of experience: arrival, reception, orientation, walking, contemplation, staying, and return. Each intervention is positioned according to operational and environmental criteria, avoiding overlapping impacts and respecting existing paths, topography, vegetation, and established views.

The proposals include the requalification and expansion of access points, new gateways, ticket offices, and organized parking areas; the implementation and renovation of Visitor Centers (CAVs), Visitor Information Points (PICs), and support modules with restrooms, food services, convenience areas, bicycle rentals, and operational facilities; as well as decks, viewpoints, suspended walkways, and elevated paths designed to enhance landscape appreciation with minimal ground interference. Structures for adventure activities—such as rappelling, canopy tours, and suspended crossings—are integrated selectively and always subordinated to the logic of the place.

The architectural language adopts local materials and low-impact construction systems, including timber, sandstone, and lightweight metal structures, with visually permeable solutions that frame the landscape rather than compete with it. Green roofs, solar energy, natural ventilation and lighting, water reuse systems, and low-impact sanitation solutions reinforce the project’s environmental commitment and reduce its long-term operational footprint.

The proposed occupation narrative understands landscape architecture as a mediator between conservation, public use, and environmental education. The interventions aim to inspire new behaviors by offering comfort, guidance, and services without compromising the experience of direct contact with nature. By organizing visitation, qualifying infrastructure, and expanding opportunities for permanence, the project strengthens the concession’s viability and consolidates the parks as benchmarks for ecotourism, preservation, and a sensitive experience of the territory.

The result is a set of interventions that does not impose form upon the ecosystem but adapts to it—revealing the landscape as the primary architecture and carefully constructing a new level of experience for visitors to Aparados da Serra and Serra Geral National Parks.