Can local crafts move beyond being exhibited within architecture to instead shape architecture itself so that the building becomes a living craft, setting a visible and replicable model for cultural and economic revival within the rural ecosystem?
As part of the 2023 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize, awarded by the Landmark Columbus Foundation, Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO was invited to create an installation on the public plaza of the library of the city of Columbus, Indiana. Designed by I.M. Pei in 1969, this building is one of the city’s most recognizable public spaces, serving as a civic gathering spot, hosting public events, and a symbol of the city’s identity.
Never designed as a theater, yet through everyday gathering it ceaselessly stages its own impromptu drama—a forgotten rooftop in a small Chinese county becomes a community commons where minimum material yields maximum public life. In the Shuinan Sub-district of Songyang County, Zhejiang Province, a second-floor platform sits enclosed by multiple residential buildings. Built between 2015 and 2017, the community failed to operate effectively for years; the platform had long been left unused—its surface cracked, facilities absent, a rudimentary public restroom fallen into disrepair. Despite its central location, the lack of physical accessibility and clear programmatic logic left the space largely ignored.
In Cabranes, Asturias, Atelier Poem has realized the Taller Agropoetico for Foresta Collective—a space that integrates agricultural practice with pedagogy.
The Mushroom Pavilion is now open at Fundación Casa Wabi, joining the campus of art and community facilities founded by Mexican artist Bosco Sodi. The project marks OMA’s first built work in Mexico. Located in the foundation’s sprawling 65 acres of natural landscape between the mountains and the Oaxacan coast, the Mushroom Pavilion is a space for cultivating mushrooms while fostering exchange between food, art, nature, and local communities.
Situated on a steeply contoured hill overlooking the Ocean in Anjarle, Maharashtra, India, Crest Nine is a community centre designed as a recreational hub for a gated villa enclave. The site drops sharply from the approach road, allowing the building to emerge gradually from the natural terrain, rather than sit upon it.
Arising from meadow-like tall grasses is ABC’s new socio-educational center, delivered last July. Despite appearances, it is no countryside landscape but a dive into the atypical Borny district of the French eastern city of Metz.
Set in the University of British Columbia’s Endowment Lands of Pacific Spirit Park, on Musqueam ancestral territory, the leləm̓ Community Center is a thoughtfully planned facility grounded in the Musqueam principles of caring for the land, sustainable living, and fostering a vibrant community life.
This project responds to Nanping Village’s unique cultural identity centered on “image” (photography and film), transforming the Cheng Family Ancestral Hall into a hybrid public space that integrates villagers’ leisure activities, cultural events, and a public library. The design strictly adheres to heritage conservation requirements, introducing new functions to meet diverse needs without altering the ancestral hall’s main structure.
The Multi-Purpose Social Center is an initiative promoted by the Concello de Carballeda de Avia as part of an ambitious rural revitalization plan for the Model Village of Muimenta. The initiative aims to activate a rural core in the process of abandonment by recovering the adjacent lands with high productive capacity, as well as rehabilitating its built environment. Through this new governance model, the goal is to improve the quality of life for its inhabitants, encourage the retention of the younger population, and generate attractions for new residents, promoting economic activity in the land, the recovery of traditional crafts, the provision of affordable housing, and the improvement of technological services.
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