Jardín Maloka is a pedagogical-architectural site designed by Pedro Aparicio and his architecture studio APLO artist Nicolás Paris, curator Juliana Steiner, in collaboration with Francy Méndez, Arlex Tovar, Rudy Villegas, teachers and students from the Custodio Garcia Rovira School, local sabedor Melvino Yavinape from the Coco Viejo community, with support of the Morocoto community of Caranacoa Yurí and the national navy of Colombia.
Jardín Maloka is a medicinal agroecological orchard-classroom which posits itself as a space for radical learning. Through and within it, nature, more-than-human species and humans interact and learn from each other in the spirit of mutual unity and cooperation using strategies of nature such as balance, symmetry, and impermanence. As a space for exchange, new models of learning are built among students, teachers, and their immediate environment, based on poetic economy, symbolic exchange and plural anatomy, with an aim to shift the structures of learning and how knowledge/power asserts itself within a classroom setting.
The jardín also serves as a medicinal plant garden allowing it to support indigenous knowledge of local flora as food and as nourishment in Colombia’s northern Amazonia, located in the Estrella Fluvial de Inirida in Guainia, a three-river confluence that flows into the Orinoco river. The jardín also houses the educational program Educación Propia that reclaims knowledge from different indigenous communities from the area including the Kurripaco, Puinave, Piapoco, Tucano and Cubeo communities, and acts as a form of resistance to a homogenous model of learning.
As an architectural site, it is inspired by the shabono structure (traditional dwelling from the Venezuelan/Brazilian Yanomami community of the Orinoco.) Materials were locally sourced from the Morocoto community, creating a low impact structure which used natural resources from the area. The technique of the chiqui-chiqui palm (also from the Morocoto community) was employed in the roof, creating an exchange of local knowledge for this construction.
Jardín Maloka is located at the Cuabanare Farm at the Custodio Garcia Rovira School in Inirida, Guainia. The pedagogical program of the Jardín Maloka also takes place in other sites, working with the Coco Viejo and La Ceiba indigenous communities, and in the Kenke Cultural and Natural Park.