Community

Never designed as a theater, yet through everyday gathering it ceaselessly stages its own impromptu drama—a forgotten rooftop in a small Chinese county becomes a community commons where minimum material yields maximum public life. In the Shuinan Sub-district of Songyang County, Zhejiang Province, a second-floor platform sits enclosed by multiple residential buildings. Built between 2015 and 2017, the community failed to operate effectively for years; the platform had long been left unused—its surface cracked, facilities absent, a rudimentary public restroom fallen into disrepair. Despite its central location, the lack of physical accessibility and clear programmatic logic left the space largely ignored.

In Cabranes, Asturias, Atelier Poem has realized the Taller Agropoetico for Foresta Collective—a space that integrates agricultural practice with pedagogy.

The Mushroom Pavilion is now open at Fundación Casa Wabi, joining the campus of art and community facilities founded by Mexican artist Bosco Sodi. The project marks OMA’s first built work in Mexico. Located in the foundation’s sprawling 65 acres of natural landscape between the mountains and the Oaxacan coast, the Mushroom Pavilion is a space for cultivating mushrooms while fostering exchange between food, art, nature, and local communities. 

Situated on a steeply contoured hill overlooking the Ocean in Anjarle, Maharashtra, India, Crest Nine is a community centre designed as a recreational hub for a gated villa enclave. The site drops sharply from the approach road, allowing the building to emerge gradually from the natural terrain, rather than sit upon it.

Arising from meadow-like tall grasses is ABC’s new socio-educational center, delivered last July. Despite appearances, it is no countryside landscape but a dive into the atypical Borny district of the French eastern city of Metz.

Set in the University of British Columbia’s Endowment Lands of Pacific Spirit Park, on Musqueam ancestral territory, the leləm̓ Community Center is a thoughtfully planned facility grounded in the Musqueam principles of caring for the land, sustainable living, and fostering a vibrant community life.