The house for the encounter with the other

“The House of Encounter with the Other” is not an installation or an exhibit: it is a living organism, a space activated through human presence, proposing a new way of inhabiting encounters.

The architecture consists of 18 circular rooms built with earth-filled sacks containing sand, fertile soil, and native seeds. The earth breathes, the seed germinates, the circle embraces. The house does not represent life: it embodies it. Each room is an unbounded refuge, a place where vulnerability becomes possible and where the other ceases to be an abstraction and becomes a real presence.

For two weeks, the house will be activated through a series of unique encounters between artists, thinkers, and the public, each designed to explore a different dimension of human connection. La Ribot and Jone San Martín will open the house through the body, gaze, and embodied perception, transforming the rooms into micro-stage settings. Mexican filmmaker, writer, and activist Diego E. Osorno will introduce the narrative and ethical dimension of encounter, inviting reflection on the visible and invisible boundaries that traverse our relationships. Payze Mahmood, with work on identity, diaspora, belonging, and loss, will activate the house as a space for affective repair and deep listening.

Arquitectures Afectives will organize the first and last encounters. These moments will serve as opening and closing rituals, designed for the audience to experience the house not as a space to visit, but as a relational field to inhabit. Through practices of presence, gaze, shared silence, and situated conversation, the house becomes a living laboratory where each person can meet themselves and others from a new perspective.

“The House of Encounter with the Other” proposes a simultaneous transformation on three levels: interior, relational, and territorial. Interior, because it invites a new way of feeling. Relational, because it reorganizes how we approach the other. Territorial, because it introduces an architecture that germinates, belongs to the place, and dialogues with the city’s affective ecology.

In a global context marked by emotional distance, fragmentation, and sensory overload, this house offers a radical alternative: a space where presence matters, where time slows down, and where encounter becomes an essential act again. It is a foundational gesture inaugurating a new way of thinking and practicing architecture: not as the construction of buildings, but as the construction of bonds.