ArchitectureDesign feature
Seven pavilions shaped by rain, ice, wind, tides and silkworms
A designboom round-up of experimental structures where weather, water and even insects help decide the final form.
Most buildings are designed to keep the weather out. This designboom feature gathers seven experiments that do the opposite, letting rain, frost, wind and living creatures finish the job. It opens on Jeju Island, where stpmj built Dissolving Arch at the Osulloc Tea Museum from pink rock-salt bricks set in cement mortar. Over the rainy season the salt washed away, leaving a lattice of mortar that let in light and views of the landscape.
Neri Oxman's Aguahoja I, made with MIT's Mediated Matter Group, is a five-metre amber structure of biopolymers that can break down in water; on a terrace at SFMOMA, researchers tracked its decay. In Winnipeg, Alejandro Felix and Fang Cui's Curtain grew icy walls on a rope-wrapped timber frame over the frozen Assiniboine River, then melted open in spring. Studio i/thee let desert gusts set glue-soaked canvas into shape in California's Morongo Valley, and poured algae-based resin into puddles for canopies beside Mud Creek in Iowa. Oxman's Silk Pavilion II, spun by some 17,532 silkworms, was shown at MoMA.
The one you can plan around is FloatLab, Höweler + Yoon's yellow steel ring on the tidal Schuylkill near Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia, which rises and falls with the river. It has arrived on site, with public access planned for spring 2027. Worth a read for anyone curious about buildings that change after the architect walks away.
Our summary of a story from designboom, published 5 November 2026. Read the original
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