“Organic Architecture”

Wednesday, March 11, 5:00 p.m. est

EMPAC Theater

Rensselaer Architecture continues its spring 2026 lecture series this Wednesday, March 11th at 5p.m. est with the lecture “Organic Architecture” by Javier Senosiain.

Javier Senosiain is a Mexican architect known to be one of the first architects to design organic architecture in Mexico. He is a graduate from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and has served as an architecture professor at the university. Throughout his career he has worked with different areas of architecture, but he specialized in Organic Architecture. He is the founder of the Organic Architecture firm in Mexico City, which has been responsible for designing offices, houses, factories, and co-ops. He is also the author of two books called Bioarquitectura and Arquitectura Organica.

Casa Orgánica (Organic House), 1985, which he built for his family as an experiment in organic architecture—and which is now publicly accessible by appointment—has become an archetype of the possibilities of contemporary cave living. The organic house was born of the idea of creating a space suited to human beings, adapted to their environmental, physical, and psychological needs, which takes into account both their natural origins and their historical background.

Senosiain’s almost incomprehensibly vast El Nido de Quetzalcóatl (The Nest of Quetzalcóatl), 1998–2007, in contrast to the domestic comforts of Casa Orgánica, is a still-developing organic architecture theme park. The design is executed on a lot measuring 5,000 square meters, with a very irregular topography owing to the oak-filled ravine that crosses it lengthwise. Senosiain’s interest in building organically, which he does principally in formed concrete, extends to a wide range of models and systems patterned on nature. What they all share is a quality of emerging from, and/or nestling into, the earth. In 2022, Javier Senosiain debuted a large mosaic-covered serpent installation in the exhibition “In praise of Caves” at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York.

https://www.arquitecturaorganica.com/