Located in Oaxaca, Mexico, Casa Wabi is a refuge for artists and the local community, designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando

Empire Of The Sun | A minimalist pool house in Ando's signature refined concrete offers shelter from the Oaxacan heat. Photography by Nicholas Alan Cope for WSJ. Magazine

The Road to Casa Wabi runs from the sun-beaten town of Puerto Escondido along a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, where surfers try their luck on the 10-foot curl of the punishing "Mexican Pipeline." As it veers northwest toward Acapulco, half-finished construction projects loom on either side before giving way to fields of mango and papaya trees and lily-pad-choked ponds. In Hidalgo, a village of cinder block and corrugated-metal houses, it turns onto a pitted dirt track. And just before reaching the waves, the track dead-ends into a massive wall that cuts parallel to the ocean across the dunes. From end to end, the barrier, made of silky gray concrete, is nearly as long as three football fields.

This is Casa Wabi, a series of structures governed by the utopian principles of its owner, Mexican-born, Brooklyn-based artist Bosco Sodi. Sodi sees the complex—which is set to open at the end of this month and features an 8,000-square-foot art gallery and several studios—as a creative refuge for fellow artists, an educational facility for the local community and a temple to the minimalist designs of one of his heroes, the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who designed everything from the swimming pool to the furniture....Continue Reading

> via WSJ