Beautiful Failures

Beautiful Failures is a construction-destruction-construction story that reflects on the rich history of the Barcelona Pavilion, decoding and rethinking its architecture from its materiality and offering new readings of the nature of the pavilion. This project deconstructs the iconic building for the first time, [lifting the travertine slabs], exposing its fragility along with its various truths, repairs, corrections and constructive differences with the original.

By cataloging and installing over 2,000 pieces of defective glass collected from glassblowing workshops throughout Barcelona, we explore the transparency and reflection of glass, material capabilities that revolutionized modern architecture in the early 20th century, embodied in the Barcelona Pavilion.