Location: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Architect: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich
Completed: 1929
11 Photographs
As ‘architects in training’ during the 90s in Australia, the crisp clear buildings of architects like Glenn Murcutt and Tadao Ando played a very prominent role in our discussions and learning. From them, we can draw a line back to the obvious influence of the work of Mies van der Rohe and the evolution of construction technology he embraced in the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition (colloquially known to architects as the Barcelona Pavilion). You can see a similar influence in one of the earlier buildings in this series, the Stahl House, the structural system and the whole philosophy of the of which is constructed off the metaphorical foundations laid by buildings like this pavilion.
My initial encounter with the Barcelona Pavilion was in a competition during my third year of architecture school back in Australia. The competition brief was to design a gallery and offices for the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, perched somewhere on the hill above and behind the original pavilion. We never visited the site for obvious reasons, proposed a sweeping set of concrete curved planes, open at both ends, and did not win the competition.
I have visited the pavilion several times in the years since and photographed it twice. The photographs here are from the first visit. At the time, it was also the first time I had visited one of the more exalted of the masterworks of modern architecture. I had seen great buildings by master practitioners in Australia, some more in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan, but to see one of the epochs defining buildings was another kettle of fish entirely.
I have recognised over the years that I get quite emotional when approaching and viewing significant buildings, especially ones I have long admired, but this time the emotional landscape was new and surprising to me. Here was something I felt like I knew intimately, but also not at all. I felt like I was supposed to understand it, to be able to read the architectural manoeuvres, and, most terrifyingly, to be able to verbalise it to my intrigued travelling companion. At this point, I realised that I knew nothing at all about the history or theory of modern architecture and kicked myself for not paying more attention in my History of Architecture classes with Sean Pickersgill.
I struggle sometimes to comprehend what the idea of ‘modern’ really is, to the point where it loses any kind of meaning. Coming on to almost a century since it was first built, yet the pavilion is crisp, clean, and designed in such a way that the simplicity and optimism feel contemporary and relevant, rather than naïve or old.
The reconstruction of the pavilion, more than 50 years after it was demolished, is controversial, but I do not have overly fixed opinions about what constitutes authenticity in architecture. I am happy to enjoy it for what it is and for what it represents, comfortable in the knowledge that it was years after I visited that I even remembered that it had been demolished and rebuilt.
I still don’t feel like I know a lot about the history of architectural theory, but by visiting these places and experiencing them myself, I am starting to understand at least why certain buildings are important within it. I think some buildings are more important to architects and architectural history than to the public, and this one feels a little like one of those. Not obviously spectacular or profoundly moving, just a simple, beautiful, and vitally important part of it all.
HWLK
