Every return to Sandwich Combinat brings with it the revelation of a rare earth. Not rare in the mineral sense, but pristine because nothing has been built on it yet. Here, time is allowed to settle rather than be cleared away. In a city shaped by real estate, the place itself becomes a pest: a stubborn plot that resists development, much like the plants that keep growing over it. What remains is the essence of returning, and of speculating on things that seem to have been here forever.

Grand Pests Hotel unfolds as a miniature labyrinth of omens, built through minimal interventions into the natural and post-industrial environment that rules over Sandwich Combinat. Initially imagined as a claustrophobic site, the circuits grew into a larger and rather friendly shelter, hosting bestiaries, samples of speculative archaeology, and organic or man-made structures that hold the space together.

If you leave a place unattended for long enough, especially one where wild species such as the tree of heaven and blackberry brambles slowly reclaim their territory, you may find something spectacular. What grows here without permission may be the only thing worth preserving.