Payao: Trans-Pacific Sardine House explores the spatial relationships created by fish and people. Through a multiyear collaborative action with the traditional fishermen group Los Tiburones and their cyclical intention of recharging an existing anchored fishing aggregation device located in the Colombian Pacific coast town of Coqui, the research designs collective and corresponding forms for both submarine and surface life. Payao is an old fishing technology widely used in the Philippines that made its way to the town of Coqui around 2014. Payao is now also a technology embraced by Los Tiburones as a medium to host migrating sardines, catch larger fish that follow, and strengthen their efforts for mangrove regeneration. The ongoing project incorporates sourcing, building, sinking, floating, diving, and drawing to exercise embodied knowledge through architecture. Finally, the project asks what it means to design with the beats of migration, currents, and tides.

Pedro Aparicio-Llorente is an architect and founding principal of APLO (Alineando Planetas), a practice based in Bogotá that makes and researches buildings and landscapes. His work stems from design and construction within the material practices and political ecologies of tropical habitats. Thinking and doing through multispecies technologies, his questions engage volcanic, riverine, and oceanic space. Aparicio-Llorente holds a master’s degree in design studies in urbanism, landscape, ecology from Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and an architecture degree from Universidad de los Andes where he co-leads the option studio Salón Selva. Other collaborations include research positions with the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; the Corporación Mano Cambiada, Nuquí, Colombia; the Harvard GSD Office for Urbanization, Cambridge; the Kokrobitey Institute, Accra; and the Rujak Center for Urban Studies, Jakarta. He is a Fulbright scholar and received, in collaboration with the community fishing group Tiburones de Coqui, the prize for actions at the 2022 Ibero-American Biennial.