OMA’s Mushroom Pavilion in Mexico is designed for cultivation and community
Casa Wabi Foundation unveils an ellipsoidal structure designed by OMA to embrace both fungi and humans – and help them grow
Fundación Casa Wabi's Mushroom Pavilion is not only the latest addition to the growing art-and-community-led campus in Mexico's Puerto Escondido, founded by artist Bosco Sodi – it is also, astonishingly, OMA's first completed project in the country. Led by the prolific and celebrated Dutch studio's New York office and partner-in-charge Shohei Shigematsu, the project has just been revealed and does what it says on the tin – its simple, ellipsoidal form has been optimised for the growing of mushrooms.
Explore Casa Wabi's Mushroom Pavilion by OMA
Inside the Mushroom Pavilion's clean volume lies a domed interior. This is divided into three areas – and respective parts of fungi growing: fruiting room, incubation room, and storage. These parts wrap around a central space that was conceived as a hub for gathering and acts as a mini auditorium for the Casa Wabi campus. An oculus at its very top brings light into the centre of the pavilion, illuminating its social activities.
Combining nourishment and community, this is a structure with multiple purposes and layered usage. There are handmade terracotta mushroom pots crafted by local artisans on the structure's stepped base and a concrete shell made of trowelled and poured-in-place concrete (the exterior is burlap-stamped so that it retains the site’s high-iron-content water for mushroom growing). This ensures fungi, people and natural elements come together in a single design, which effortlessly connects with all aspects of its concept.
'Working with Bosco Sodi and Fundacion Casa Wabi, we conceived a pavilion for the very specific function of mushroom cultivation while offering a space for people to come together. The result is an incubator of both food and community that’s spatially fit to support all types of activities for the locals, visitors, and the foundation. As a Japanese architect, it was especially meaningful to contribute an art campus guided by Japanese philosophy and spatial traditions,' says Shigematsu.
