On Jeju Island, the architects at stpmj stacked rose-colored salt bricks into a small arch, a jeju island salt arch designed to let the island’s rain take it apart. Over several months, the masonry dissolved, leaving a skeleton of cement mortar where a solid wall had stood.
This feature belongs to designboom‘s POSTHUMAN UTOPIAS chapter, which is presented in partnership with INDX|GLOBAL, a cultural platform for Indian architecture and design.
The seven projects below treat weather, water, wind and living organisms as collaborators rather than threats. In each case, the environment helps decide how the building looks, changes or disappears.
When rain becomes part of the jeju island salt arch
Dissolving Arch was built for a climate that tests masonry every summer. The Osulloc Tea Museum on Jeju Island hosted the jeju island salt arch, and the island’s long, humid summer rainy season was the design brief.
The vault of this jeju island salt arch used translucent rock-salt bricks joined by cement mortar. The salt let daylight filter into the passage while it slowly washed away, so the jeju island salt arch grew more open as the exhibition ran.
Salt does not behave like clay. The salt bricks dissolved under repeated rainfall and humidity, while the mortar remained. The mortar stays behind, which is why the jeju island salt arch ends as a porous frame.
Like the salt arch, many architects now design pavilions that shift with their surroundings. Robotic earth bricks forming a microclimate pavilion shows how a climate-responsive structure can be built from natural material.
Materials designed to decay
Aguahoja I stands five meters tall, and its amber, almost glasslike surfaces vary in thickness and flexibility. Neri Oxman, the designer, developed the pavilion with the Mediated Matter Group at MIT, using a robotic platform that prints biomaterials.
The structure is built from biopolymers derived from organic sources, including cellulose and chitosan. Their material composition lets them respond to environmental exposure, which conventional building materials are generally designed to resist.
Water breaks the biopolymers down, which lets the pavilion return to the environment. The project record cites United Nations Environment Programme figures showing more than 300 million tons of plastic produced each year, with less than 10 percent recycled.
When Aguahoja I was installed on an outdoor terrace at SFMOMA in 2020, researchers used instruments to track its exposure to the elements and its decomposition. The project treats the eventual end of the structure as part of its design from the start.
Ice that builds walls and then melts them
Curtain rose on Winnipeg’s frozen Assiniboine River as a temporary shelter. Alejandro Felix and Fang Cui began with a timber frame wrapped in rope, then used the river’s cold to build the enclosure.
Water pumped from beneath the river ice ran through a dripping system. Icicles formed along the suspended strands, and the ice grew thicker with each drop.
As the water froze, the ice built into thick, uneven walls that closed the open frame. When temperatures rose, the ice thinned, turned translucent and opened, until the timber frame showed through again.
Structures that follow the water and the wind
A bright-yellow steel ring sits in the tidal Schuylkill River near Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia. Called FloatLab, the 75-foot-wide structure was developed by J. Meejin Yoon and Höweler + Yoon Architecture.
A buoyancy and ballast system lets the ring rise and fall with the river. The tides, which can move the water roughly five to seven feet in a day, set its height. A sloping circular walkway brings visitors toward the surface while keeping them inside the structure.
FloatLab has reached its Philadelphia site, and public access is planned for spring 2027.
Water shapes these projects in more ways than one, and floating architecture takes that idea further. Yvonne Mak’s eco-friendly floating concrete castle offers a useful comparison for anyone curious how a structure can rest on a river.
Desert wind did much of the shaping for Ghost House, an installation by i/thee in California’s Morongo Valley. The team set two lightweight timber frames in the shape of small houses, then draped them with custom-cut canvas.
The canvas had been soaked in a water-based adhesive and left exposed to the wind. Over several hours, the fabric billowed and twisted until the adhesive hardened and locked the forms in place.
Square openings were cut into the finished surfaces afterward, giving the windblown shapes the look of windows. The architects set the frame, and the gusts drew the final outline.
Puddle Pavilion began as a spill. For an installation beside Mud Creek in Bondurant, Iowa, i/thee poured algae-based bio-resin onto a flat surface and let gravity and surface tension shape it. No molds were used.
Once the resin hardened, the irregular sheets were lifted onto slender steel columns. The bright-yellow canopies now sit above the ground, holding the outlines the liquid took as it set.
A pavilion built with living silk
Silk Pavilion II is a six-meter-tall structure developed by Neri Oxman and the Mediated Matter Group. It relied on 17,532 silkworms, which were placed on a specially designed textile stretched over a steel framework.
A rotating apparatus guided the insects across the surface. Light and temperature changed how the silkworms moved and how densely they spun, so each layer of silk differed from the last.
The worms’ biological activity also opened gaps in the fabric, and those openings became part of the enclosure. The pavilion pairs human-made steel and textile with a surface that another species physically produced.
Silk Pavilion II is presented as part of a larger exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Its construction shows how far a designer can share control with a living organism.
Buildings that keep changing
Across these seven experimental structures, the building does not stop at completion. Rain removes a wall, freezing water adds one, and passing wind or moving tides set the final form.
Silk Pavilion II takes this idea furthest. The architects set the conditions, and the silkworms supplied part of the construction, so the final form reflects more than the person who drew it.
The result is a structure that keeps responding to its site long after the designer steps away. That response, not the original drawing, is what these projects ask architects to plan for.
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Source: designboom.com
Frequently asked questions
What happened to the salt arch on Jeju Island after several months?
Rain dissolved the salt bricks over several months, leaving a skeleton of cement mortar where the solid wall had stood. The architects at stpmj designed the arch to let the island’s rain take it apart.
Why did the salt arch’s salt bricks dissolve but the mortar remain?
The salt bricks dissolved under repeated rainfall and humidity, while the cement mortar stayed behind. This is why the arch ended as a porous frame.
How does FloatLab rise and fall with the river?
FloatLab uses a buoyancy and ballast system that lets its steel ring rise and fall with the tidal Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. The tides, which can move the water roughly five to seven feet in a day, set its height.
How did Ghost House get its windblown, window-cut shapes?
Custom-cut canvas soaked in a water-based adhesive was left exposed to desert wind, which billowed and twisted it until the adhesive hardened and locked the forms in place. Square openings were cut into the finished surfaces afterward, giving them the look of windows.
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