Renowned architect Javier Senosiain (born 1948) is the founder and principal of the architectural firm Arquitectura Orgánica in Mexico City. Senosiain was Mathias Goeritz’s student at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), and then became a professor of architecture there. He is the leader of the second generation of Mexican organic architects and a principal practitioner, scholar, and proponent of what he calls bio-architecture.
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. 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. 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.
