“ERROR ERROR ERROR”- this is something we perceive as a threat, something we are told to solve and eliminate. The Croatian pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale offers a new perspective: controversially, it encourages us to see errors as potentials - as opportunities to grow new concepts and worlds.

The project collects errors which arise from the intersection of our strict legislative system, everyday serendipity, and the free decisions. As a result, we encounter spaces which strictly follow the rules. However, there are these “glitches” which still find their way into our surroundings: brownfield sites in urban environments, illegal building practices, or surplus materials that no one sees value in.

The Croatian Pavilion gives a playful perspective on these glitches while being boldly critical of bureaucracy and top-down urban planning practices. The pavilion invites us to see errors as a potential seed for collective intelligence. An error could be something where new kinds of collective actions could be experimented, new wisdom could emerge.

The pavilion categorizes the errors into three families: Resource Freezone , Wicked Product and Layering Surplus. Each category is illustrated with significant examples found in Croatia, some of them ongoing experiments, others hints of huge potential. Visiting the pavilion feels somehow liberating: it definitely tickles our “inner punk” and awakens the urge to resist the flood of rules we are confronted with and take responsibility for our surroundings.