Osmosis
Sector
Public
Location
Texas, United States
Year
2023
Design Team
Cen Shen, Changsong Li
Award
NY Architecture Prize- Gold
Osmosis is an ecological tourism and education center located in El Paso, Texas, developed in response to severe water depletion and soil salinization in the American Southwest.
The project addresses the growing disconnection between human development and fragile desert ecosystems, proposing architecture as a mediator between environmental systems and human occupation rather than an isolated object in the landscape.
The design is conceptually driven by the biological process of osmosis, describing the movement and balance of elements across a permeable membrane. The architecture is therefore conceived as a porous threshold between ground, building, and landscape. Portions of the building are embedded within the earth, creating a spatial experience where visitors move through spaces that exist between terrain and structure, reinforcing the relationship between human activity and environmental processes.
Osmosis functions as both an educational facility and an ecological intervention. The building form emerges from the surrounding desert landscape and expresses environmental conditions such as water scarcity, erosion, and salt accumulation. The project demonstrates how architecture can move beyond shelter to operate as an environmental interface that connects human habitation with ecological systems and landscape processes.
