Blending elements of architecture, art, sculpture, technology, graphics, lighting, and engineering, La Mariposa and its surrounding pavilion was designed as both a work of public art and activation opportunity for The Monarch San Antonio, a newly opened hotel sited in San Antonio’s Hemisfair Park. Overland Partners, also the architect of The Monarch hotel, worked diligently with both the client and its technical partners to execute an architectural work of public art that incorporated the palette and materials of the surrounding civic park, integrating the pavilion’s landscaping in a way that invites park visitors to interact with the sculpture itself. Additionally, the sculpture acts as an interactive space for the hotel, which activates it for public and private events alike.

La Mariposa’s design takes inspiration from the monarch butterfly and its migratory path through San Antonio. The three main sculptures, which appear as a small, medium and large wing, represent the notion of monarch migration further, mirroring the three generations of monarchs required to complete the full migration path. Additionally, the multilayered graphic pattern and the way it is lit speaks to the word “kaleidoscope” — defined as a group of butterflies, but also in reference to the optical instrument that uses mirrors and loose colored objects to create an ever-changing, beautiful symmetry and design.

The skin is comprised of approximately 410 glass triangle panels, each unique in terms of graphic and shape. The final design is 24 feet tall at its highest point and stretches more than 65 feet in length across the sculpture’s three unique wings. A similar graphic was scaled up and is utilized on the hotel’s 17th floor as an angled glass backlit soffit. This allows guests in the park to see the monarch pattern at eye level via La Mariposa, and to look up and see the pattern mirrored from 17 floors below. Nearly a decade in the making, the project required a range of innovation and international expertise: engineering was done in Germany; the fabrication of the steel frame was done in Turkey; and the glass was fabricated in China.