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Gerardo Broissin creates a lush microclimate inside a puzzle pavilion

Puzzling

Gerardo Broissin creates a lush microclimate inside a puzzle pavilion

Egaligilo uses two distinct skins to support a microclimate within. (Alexandre de la Roche/Broissin)

Mexico City-based architect Gerardo Broissin has created a jigsaw puzzle-like concrete structure for the courtyard of the celebrated Museo Tamayo. Built for Design Week Mexico this fall, the pavilion, known as Egaligilo (Esperanto for equalizer), forms its own porous microclimate full of ferns and shrubs. 

In order for the pavilion to successfully keep the plants healthy, it allows light and oxygen to enter through the large circular entrance and through gaps in the various puzzle piece-shaped segments of the exterior wall and the curving interior walls made of small white circles. Water filters in through the gaps in both the facade and the interior walls, which work together as interacting “skins.” The concrete panels and the circles are held together on a steel frame while bulbous outcroppings perch on the sides.

Broissin sees Egaligilo as a commentary on the high-tech, smooth surfaces of parametric design. While these bulbous forms break out from the more solid cube that is the pavilion’s central form, there are many gaps and holes—a blurry boundary of inside versus out that supports the flourishing flora within. According to Broissin, Egaligilo “creates its own microclimate by preserving a series of atmospheric conditions” that are necessary to maintaining a small cloud forest inside the pavilion at all times. Light and rain seep through both skins and keep the planets alive. 

Egaligilo, which recently won second place in the ephemeral architecture/pavilions category from Glocal‘s Noldi Schreck Awards program, is slated to close on-site at the Museo Tamayo next month. Rather than getting rid of it, however, Broissin has suggested Egaligilo could be disassembled and relocated to a new community for use as a classroom. 

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