Manaus is where forest meets factory, where silence echoes against machines. OMAMA is born from this contrast and turns tension into conscious creation. Manaus is a city where nothing is simple. In the heart of the largest tropical rainforest on the planet, it houses one of Brazil’s biggest industrial zones. It produces cell phones, TVs, motorcycles, electronic components, all surrounded by rivers, dense jungle, and biodiversity found nowhere else on Earth. This juxtaposition is not a detail. It is the city’s essence. While the living forest pulses with silence, cycles, and regeneration, the production lines of the Manaus Free Trade Zone follow another rhythm — fast, mechanical, demanding. In 2021, the industrial hub of Manaus generated R$140 billion in revenue, producing 14 million phones, 10 million TVs, and 1.2 million motorcycles (World Bank, 2023). But around these numbers, there are neighborhoods where less than half of young people finish high school (IDB). A city of high technology and low equity. Of mass production and interrupted education. The productive tension is visible. It is in the trucks crossing the highways while Amazonian communities live with the bare minimum. It is in the concrete that advances and the vegetation that resists. It is in the R$30 billion in annual federal tax exemptions that support the region’s economic model (Liberal Amazon, 2023), even as studies show that the loss of the forest could cost Brazil seven times more (Mongabay, 2023). This same tension lives in OMAMA. We also operate between two worlds: the forest and the market. OMAMA designs are born from Amazonian wood, a living and ancestral material shaped with care, but they must also speak to a world that demands speed, volume, and design. In the same object, we carry the touch of the hand and the logic of industry. The time of nature and the time of consumption. And that is exactly where our purpose lives. We are not here to resolve the tension, but to live within it with awareness. To turn friction into form, contradiction into strength. The forest teaches one thing. The market demands another. OMAMA listens to both. Manaus is the right city for this. Here, everything moves between opposites. Force and vulnerability. Wealth and scarcity. Growth and preservation. Resistance and invention. OMAMA is made of these forces in collision. And it is in this unstable space, between what was and what could be, that we find creation.

The rivers of the Amazon are more than landscape. They are lifelines. They carry people, goods, memory, and meaning. They are the living arteries that connect nature to design. For OMAMA, they are the ground beneath our work and the source of a forest that is always in motion. Life along the water. The Amazon in motion. In the state that holds one of the largest rivers on Earth, life moves to the rhythm of water. Small boats glide along jungle banks, carrying families, food, and daily essentials. Larger vessels known as recreios serve as floating hotels, linking cities and riverside villages in journeys that can last for days. The wood we use at OMAMA travels the same rivers. These are noble Amazonian species, carefully selected from legal and sustainable sources. They cross long distances by land and by water. In the most remote parts of the forest, where there are no roads, the boat is not an option. It is the only way. But these rivers are more than transport routes. They are part of a living ecosystem found nowhere else on the planet. In some stretches of the Amazon, fish like the tambaqui feed on fruit that falls from the trees. Yes, fruit. Above the water, branches. Below, floating menus. And while the fish rise, the boats carry history. During the rubber boom of the early twentieth century, these waterways were alive with commerce. In 1910, the port of Manaus moved over one million tons of cargo per year, more than one hundred thirty boats a day. Lined up bow to stern, those vessels would stretch over three kilometers, all loaded with the forest’s white gold on its way to the industrial centers of the world. This riverborne wealth reshaped the city. Manaus became known as the Paris of the Tropics, and not just for vanity. The city led in infrastructure. In 1896, it installed public electric lighting before São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. The Teatro Amazonas opened with European grandeur. It seemed that modernity had anchored itself in the heart of the jungle. Today, the wonder comes from a different kind of encounter. Just outside Manaus, the Negro and Solimões rivers run side by side for kilometers without mixing. The Negro is dark, acidic, and warm. The Solimões is cloudy, cold, and fast. The contrast in density, temperature, and current creates a rare natural phenomenon and a powerful metaphor for the diversity of the Amazon. It is nature, alive and visible. At OMAMA, that contrast inspires us. Like the Meeting of the Waters, our work brings together opposites. Tradition and innovation. Nature and craft. Forest and future. Each object we make carries a quiet balance. The weight of wood. The lightness of the hand that shaped it. Like so many Amazonian communities, we depend on the river for transformation. The rivers are roads, markets, food, and theater. They are also the base of our work. With each journey, they remind us that to preserve is not to look backward. It is to make sure that this ancestral and regenerative path keeps flowing. For everyone. And for always.

When the forest strengthens, it gives back in abundance. And along with it, economies flourish, knowledge expands, and OMAMA’s purpose driven design takes root. The Amazon is more than a forest. It is a living, breathing organism with its own intelligence. And like any living body, it responds. When we care for it, it returns the favor in the form of abundance. When the forest thrives, it is not only nature that blossoms. People thrive too. So do local knowledge systems and visions of a regenerative future. Sustainable forestry is one of the turning points. Instead of extracting with no regard for consequence, it allows Amazonian wood to be harvested with respect for the forest’s natural rhythms, generating income for the communities that live with it and from it. In 2023, timber production in the Amazon generated over 4.27 billion reais. Yet nearly 35 percent of that came from illegal extraction (UN Habitat, BrazilReports). The challenge is not just economic growth, but how it is done. Studies show that reforestation and well managed forestry across Brazil have the potential to deliver even greater returns, more than 20.8 billion reais annually, while keeping the forest standing (Mongabay, 2015). The Amazon has the potential to lead a new kind of economy — one rooted in its own natural resources and the knowledge held by local communities. The Amazonian bioeconomy, with products like açaí, native cacao, Brazil nuts, and essential oils, could generate up to 8 billion dollars a year if developed with proper structure and respect for its unique logic (Mongabay, 2023). But not everyone benefits equally. While São Paulo has a per capita GDP of over 66 thousand reais, the Amazon region remains around 23 thousand (IBGE, World Bank). Access to education is also uneven. Only 54 percent of young people in the region finish high school, compared to the national average of 69 percent (IDB). There are, however, concrete signs of change. Projects like Amazon Sustainable Landscapes, with 80 million dollars in funding, are working to promote balanced land use across nine states in the region (World Bank, 2024). Initiatives like Mombak, backed by national and international investment, are restoring forests and creating new income streams. Their goal is to plant eight million trees by 2025 (Reuters, 2024). At OMAMA, each creation carries these values. The wood we select is legal and responsibly sourced. The knowledge behind OMAMA’s designs is built in partnership with local communities. And what we deliver is not just a beautiful object. It is a bridge between what the forest can offer and what the world still needs to learn how to value. When the forest thrives, what grows is not just an economy. It is autonomy. It is memory. It is proof that another path is possible. And that path runs deep.