A new exhibition on the site of Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich’s Barcelona Pavilion demonstrates the potential of locally sourced timber for construction on a mass scale.

Mass Is More features a new pavilion in regional timber CLT panels on the Barcelona property. A collaboration between Bauhaus Earth and the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), it explores the use of regenerative, decarbonising materials in architecture. Both organisations make it their mission to promote ecological, climate-positive urban spaces in the face of social and environmental challenges.

The mass timber panels were sustainably sourced from Spanish forests and used in a way that highlights their robust and tactile qualities. While designed in a modernist aesthetic that captures the spirit of the original Barcelona Pavilion, it proposes a radical departure from the concrete and steel pervasive in modernist structures with renewable biomaterials that can be upcycled and reused.

The exhibition is on this week until 9 October, as part of the European Forest City 2022 programme, in Barcelona this year.

Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s Canberra pavilion is a sculpture and a gathering space