SCULPTING SPACE
HOME
Connected by raw materiality and primordial forms, Bosco Sodi’s home and studios in Mexico show the natural affinity between his art and architecture.
On the face of it, Bosco Sodi’s life is a contradiction. An artist who works with plainly earthbound materials – clay, wood, gold dust, mineral pigments, volcanic rock – Sodi lives a breath-takingly airborne life, traveling to the places where his work is on view. Like other members of his rootless artistic tribe, Sodi maintains multiple studios worldwide, including two in his home country Mexico. He works with clay at Casa Wabi, the Tadao Ando-designed cultural centre he founded a decade ago in Puerto Escondido. He paints and glazes in a complex of Mexico City buildings, designed in 2021 by Alberto Kalach, which also serves as office and exhibition space for his work. And he now has a house in the city as well, Casa Siza. Its creator, Álvaro Siza, took on the project after an impromptu chat that unfolded when Sodi stopped by the 92-year-old Pritzker prize-winner’s office in Porto, in Portugal. For Sodi, the result echoes his earliest memories of architecture as a shaper of space. “My mother showed us a lot when we were young,” he says, recalling family outings around Mexico City. “I fell in love with the capacity of architecture to sculpt the surroundings, in a way. That is the architecture I love.”
Equally important, he adds, are the materials used. He favours the primitive, the unrefined. “That’s why I’m so close to Siza or Alberto Kalach or Tadao Ando, because they use these kinds of materials,” Sodi says. “It’s simple. It’s not flashy. Also, the way they age, it’s really good.”
On the natural affinity between his art and the realm of architecture Sodi notes, “They’re very connected, because architecture is material. It is not an ephemeral art, it’s a real art. My approach is very similar. My work’s very real. It has a material presence that’s energetic, in a way. I think that’s where they cross each other. And also, my work sculpts the space. It dialogues with negative space, and architecture does the same.”
Read the full home feature in Volume XIV.
WORDS Sarah Medford
PHOTOGRAPHY Martien Mulder
design /delight: A PLATFORM FOR CONTEMPORARY DESIGN
During Shanghai Art Week, the city’s cultural landscape was shaped by the second edition of design /delight, an emerging platform dedicated to contemporary collectible design and functional art.
SPATIAL GESTURES
The wearable objects Yuta Ishihara makes under the moniker Shihara play tricks on us. “The hardware is in focus, incorporated into the design itself,” says Ishihara.
LAKE COME DESIGN FESTIVAL 2025
The city of Como once again hosted the seventh edition of the Lake Como Design Festival, under the theme Fragments. The festival invited visitors to reflect on fragmentation not as a sign of rupture, but as a catalyst for creative rebirth, for the preservation of memory, and for a regenerative approach to design.
SCULPTING SPACE
HOME
Connected by raw materiality and primordial forms, Bosco Sodi’s home and studios in Mexico show the natural affinity between his art and architecture.
On the face of it, Bosco Sodi’s life is a contradiction. An artist who works with plainly earthbound materials – clay, wood, gold dust, mineral pigments, volcanic rock – Sodi lives a breath-takingly airborne life, traveling to the places where his work is on view. Like other members of his rootless artistic tribe, Sodi maintains multiple studios worldwide, including two in his home country Mexico. He works with clay at Casa Wabi, the Tadao Ando-designed cultural centre he founded a decade ago in Puerto Escondido. He paints and glazes in a complex of Mexico City buildings, designed in 2021 by Alberto Kalach, which also serves as office and exhibition space for his work. And he now has a house in the city as well, Casa Siza. Its creator, Álvaro Siza, took on the project after an impromptu chat that unfolded when Sodi stopped by the 92-year-old Pritzker prize-winner’s office in Porto, in Portugal. For Sodi, the result echoes his earliest memories of architecture as a shaper of space. “My mother showed us a lot when we were young,” he says, recalling family outings around Mexico City. “I fell in love with the capacity of architecture to sculpt the surroundings, in a way. That is the architecture I love.”
Equally important, he adds, are the materials used. He favours the primitive, the unrefined. “That’s why I’m so close to Siza or Alberto Kalach or Tadao Ando, because they use these kinds of materials,” Sodi says. “It’s simple. It’s not flashy. Also, the way they age, it’s really good.”
On the natural affinity between his art and the realm of architecture Sodi notes, “They’re very connected, because architecture is material. It is not an ephemeral art, it’s a real art. My approach is very similar. My work’s very real. It has a material presence that’s energetic, in a way. I think that’s where they cross each other. And also, my work sculpts the space. It dialogues with negative space, and architecture does the same.”
Read the full home feature in Volume XIV.
WORDS Sarah Medford
PHOTOGRAPHY Martien Mulder