An earthen pavilion built for an olive tree

BUSTAN is the kind of pavilion that starts with a different client altogether: a living olive tree. Developed by the Material Topology Research Lab at the Technion with Weizmann Tree Lab for The Circle exhibition at Design Museum Holon, the full-scale structure wraps 178 robotically 3D printed earth bricks around the tree to form a porous enclosure. Rather than treating the tree as decoration, the project is organised around its canopy, roots and changing needs.

The bricks are made mainly from local soil mixed with plant fibres and mineral binders, then printed with different shapes and textures depending on the job each one has to do. Some cast shade over the roots, some add thermal mass, some help air move through the pavilion, and others hold moisture in the planting zone. There are also niches for insects, birds, fungi, plants and small mammals, with bamboo tubes and perforations turning the wall into a habitat as much as a structure.

What makes it worth reading, and seeing, is the way old dryland farming logic meets contemporary fabrication. The team describes it as a full-scale prototype, and the point is not a finished monument but an evolving system that will weather and be occupied over time. The Circle runs at Design Museum Holon from September 2026 to March 2027; one for anyone interested in how architecture might work with living landscapes rather than sit apart from them.

Our summary of a story from designboom, published 7 October 2026. Read the original