La Prenyada: architecture as a living organism

'La Prenyada' is an installation created by artist Stella Rahola Matutes and architect Roger Paez at Galeria FUGA, which takes as its starting point an apparently inert element: a broken travertine slab from the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion. However, this fragment of rock is not as inactive as it seems. The exhibition is conceived as a continuation of 'Inviting Life', an ephemeral intervention from 2023 in the same pavilion, which proposed a reinterpretation of architecture from a biological perspective. The new proposal expands this reflection, subverting the idea of architecture as an immutable entity, and highlighting the dynamic relationship between travertine, humidity and the passage of time, questioning the tendency to maintain architectural structures in a state of artificial freezing.

While the pavilion works to maintain an appearance that is intact and faithful to the expectations of visitors and the infinitely repeated images, this exhibition seeks to subvert this order and let the material follow its life cycle. The slab, inoculated with moss since days before the inauguration, will become the center of a daily care ritual by the artists, the gallery and visitors. A latex tube, which crosses the room like an umbilical cord, supplies chlorine-free water to the stone, ensuring its humidity and promoting the growth of the living organisms that inhabit it. An interesting reflection that emerges from this exhibition is the ability of travertine—a calcareous sedimentary rock formed mainly by calcite—to relate to water in a cyclical manner. During the night, the stone absorbs humidity from the environment, and during the day, as temperatures rise, this humidity dissipates in the form of vapor, making it clear that this material is alive. This is not just a metaphor or a poetic image, but a profound question about how we define what is alive. If we rethink the way we perceive our built environment, it could look radically different.

'La Prenyada', Stella Rahola Matutes i Roger Páez. Foto: Mar Olave

Beyond the living slab, the installation includes a series of lithographs that document the slow and meticulous study of travertine, works produced by Elisava students who participated in the original intervention. Accompanying this transformation, a diary is also on display, meticulously recording the changes and documenting the evolution of the slab. The exhibition closes, in the gallery's restroom, with an audiovisual sequence that shows the work process and the result of the temporary intervention in the pavilion.

'La Prenyada', Stella Rahola Matutes i Roger Páez. Foto: Mar Olave

'La Prenyada', therefore, is not a straight or predictable path, but an open and experimental process that will demonstrate, until March 15, how architecture is not a fixed image, but an entity in constant dialogue with nature and time. This exhibition, together with the previous intervention 'Inviting Life', aims to dismantle the iconic rigidity of the pavilion and propose a new reading that claims a more contemporary and interesting identity, beyond the simple perpetuation of a static image, highlighting the capacity of materials to change, age and, ultimately, live.

'La Prenyada', Stella Rahola Matutes i Roger Páez.