Dust Pavilion. Rereading the Pavilion in Times of Climate Emergency
Dust Pavilion is a temporary intervention and a research and public mediation project at the Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich Pavilion. It proposes rereading this iconic architecture of modernity through two mineral presences that pass through it: Saharan dust, which periodically reaches Barcelona and settles on its surfaces, and the onyx of Algerian origin that occupies the centre of the Pavilion.
The proposal begins with a situated question: what happens if we look at the Pavilion from the perspective of what is usually removed, cleaned away, or left outside the architectural narrative? Dust, often perceived as residue, becomes here a material evidence of an unstable climate and a shared atmosphere. Its deposition on glass, travertine and onyx alters the modern promise of transparency, clarity and permanence, opening up a contemporary reading of maintenance, vulnerability and material responsibility.
At the same time, the Pavilion’s onyx connects the building to a broader geography of extraction, transport and transcontinental circulation of materials. Through this relationship between air and stone, Dust Pavilion activates a reflection on heritage, modernity, extractivism, coloniality and climate emergency.
The intervention unfolds through a set of public mediation devices: a leaflet introducing the temporary renaming of the Pavilion as Dust Pavilion, a programme of conversations and walks, the collection and interpretation of dust samples in collaboration with scientific specialists, and the development of an audiovisual piece, an artistic intervention and a publication in the near future.
The proposal turns the Pavilion into a place from which to question fossil modernity and to rehearse another way of looking at architecture: one that is more attentive to the cycles of matter, to the ecosystems that sustain it, to the traceability of materials and to the shared air that passes through bodies, territories and architecture.
Dust Pavilion is part of a broader research project that revisits the architectural icons of modernity under the conditions of climate emergency. It is also the name of the collective formed by Llorenç Bonet, Olga Subirós and Joana Teixidor, which has received a grant for artistic creation, research and innovation from the Generalitat de Catalunya.
With the collaboration of the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, the Fundació Joan Miró, the Barcelona Dust Regional Center and IDAEA-CSIC.
Within the framework of Barcelona 2026 World Capital of Architecture.
Dust Pavilion is a research and mediation collective formed by Olga Subirós, architect and curator; Llorenç Bonet, historian and editor; and Joana Teixidor, artist and editor. Their work brings together research, architecture, material culture, curatorial practices and the production of public knowledge to critically revisit the icons of modernity in the context of the climate emergency. In this project, the collective takes the Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich Pavilion as a case study through which to think about atmosphere, extractivism, coloniality and material, ecological and social responsibility.
