0008_Ecological Laboratory — Office for Repair | Systems and Spatial Design Studio

Organizacion Ecologica Sol y Verde

The Ecological Laboratory

Expected 2027

DATE: 2026–2027
STATUS: PRE-CONSTRUCTION
BUILDING TYPE: Institutional & Public

LOCATION: Paxcamán, Petén, Guatemala
CLIMATE ZONE: Tropical humid
CLIMATE STRESSORS: Deforestation; soil degradation; biodiversity loss

Commissioned by:
Organización Ecológica Sol y Verde
Supported by:
Honnold Foundation; Evoca Foundation
In collaboration with: Guatemalan Ministry of Agriculture; the UK Permaculture Association

OFR ROLE: Lead designer
OFR WORK STRANDS: Spatial Design; Strategic Systems Design; Capacity & Co-Design; RESEARCH & PUBLICATION

The Ecological Laboratory is the second and final building of Sol y Verde's community centre, and the designed product of three years of monitored use of the first. It houses the programmes the Ecological Classroom proved but could not support at scale: a medicinal kitchen-laboratory, a community library and seed bank, and an off-grid solar system for the whole site. Its design, its supply chain and its construction crew are already in place through the delivery of the Ecological Classroom, completed in 2024.

Sol y Verde's centre sits on a permaculture farm at the edge of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, in a region losing its forest, its soil and its young people to migration. Three years of running and carefully monitoring the Ecological Classroom post-completion ensured the Laboratory is designed around those specific gaps rather than as a general expansion. It carries the same material logic: biobased, hyper-local, reduced to a modular system that local families can reproduce, solar-powered, and documented in open-source manuals as it is built

The project approaches landscape and building as a singular, productive and interdependent ecosystem. Design and construction phases are teaching programmes for local beneficiaries and an opportunity to platform and bolster local traders.

Because OFR built the supply system for the Classroom, the Laboratory continues to bolster local regenerative supply chains. The suppliers within a 34km radius are already mapped and vetted, the costs negotiated, and the local construction crew already briefed on the building's structural logic. This project’s construction is governed by the Petén seasons: land preparation in the dry season, the structural build through the temperate season as a live teaching context, and earthen plastering in the following dry season, when low humidity lets the finishes cure.

The Ecological Laboratory will unlock the centre’s capacity to run two simultaneous programme streams across twice the floor area, finally matching demand that has outgrown the Classroom for three years. The kitchen-workshop will host the medicinal and economic programmes that currently have no home. The library and modular space will remove the constraint that forces the women’s group and the children’s programme to share a single room. Together, these improvements will form the conditions that allow Sol y Verde to function at the scale it was designed for.

CO-DESIGNED FROM INCEPTION WITH WOMEN AND CHILDREN AS CORE BENEFICIARIES

REINFORCING HYPER-LOCAL SUPpLY CHAINS AND SUPPORTING ARTISANSHIP

CAPACITY-BUILDING THROUGHOUT CONSTRUCTION

CO-BUILDING, WITH USERS AND BENEFICIARIES INVOLVED THROUGHOUT CONSTRUCTION

Partner Credits: Office for Repair, with Organización Ecológica Sol y Verde.
Supported by the Honnold Foundation and Evoca Foundation, with the Guatemalan Ministry of Agriculture and the UK Permaculture Association.
Photography: Kalin Steen, Lou Elena Bouey, Vector Delgado and Rony Rodriguez.