Beautiful Failures

Abstract

The publication "Beautiful Failures", with texts by Roger Paez and Stella Rahola Matutes, joint leaders of the unit “Effects and Emotions” for the Master in Ephemeral Architecture and Temporary Spaces (MEATS) at ELISAVA (UVic-UCC), photos by Alba Yruela, Noelia Failde and Ardila and graphic design by Valentina Pulian, is the result of the intervention of the same name that was presented in the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in May 2021.

Beautiful Failures is a site-specific intervention that investigates fragility and vulnerability through two of the most delicate materials used in the construction of the Barcelona Pavilion by Lilly Reich and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: glass and travertine.

Seventeen travertine paving slabs lifted out of their spaces reveal seventeen voids. Around them are placed a series of discarded glass pieces salvaged from artisan glassblowing workshops in Barcelona and grouped by the students into seventeen families, based on their morphology. The new landscape resulting from the partial removal of the pavement, and its relationship with the rejected glass pieces, show similarities with an archaeological stratigraphic excavation. Understood simultaneously as a ritual of burial and revelation, the temporary intervention in the pavilion sets up a cycle of birth, death and rebirth in which all the elements play an important role: from the history of the pavilion—understood not just as a replica, but as a living entity, implicit in the actions involving the travertine—to the life force concentrated in each of the pieces of glass.