The Independent Research Institute for Scientific Failures inhabits a post-industrial landscape of the cement quarries in Trieste that sustain the institution by providing the underground territory for experimentation and its primary building material. A fascination with obsolescence lies at the core of the project, which thematically addresses the need to contain scientific progress architecturally and satisfy the territorial concerns of the Big Science. The dual motive stems from the preconceived tensions of economic progress versus perpetual obsolescence of space—and—scientific progress versus accident. The project, developed at TU Delft, speculates on reversing re-naturalisation and excavating in the critically unstable Karstic terrain—where the notions of accident and disaster materialise.