Mies van der Rohe Pavillion

The Indian mausoleum Taj Mahal, built in ivory-white marble with inlaid semi-precious stones on the right bank of the river Yamuna in India, was commissioned by the fifth Mughal emperor as an expression of love to his late wife, Mumtaz Mahal. In Vienna, Schönbrunn Palace consists of 1,441 rooms decorated in the Baroque style; once the summer palace of the Habsburg rulers. And in New York, the Empire State Building’s 102 stories stretches towards the sky in an Art Deco-manner, once the tallest building in the world. 

What do these three places have in common? They are all manmade, buildings designed for humans to use in one capacity or another. The very style that they were designed in says something about the aspirations of the builders, and of the time in which they were constructed. Made to last for eternity, they were used as an attempt to stop time, to signal to the future that once, life took happened in this very spot. 

The Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona is in this way similar to the Taj Mahal, Schönnbrunn Palace and the Empire State Building. Also this building says something about the period in which it was designed, and of its original purpose. 

Van der Rohe was a German architect and the last director of the Bauhaus. He would eventually become American, after the Nazis rose to power. The Nazis were ideologically opposed to the sleek and futuristic design of the modernist Bauhaus school of design. They wanted to turn the clock backwards, reinventing a past that never existed, and so van der Rohe, and many with him, fled the country so that they could continue developing their modernist ideas.

As a young student he worked at his father’s stone carving shop, which gave him an excellent understanding of the complexity of different types of stone.  Like so many other architects of his generation, he began designing in a rather traditionalist manner, finding inspiration in Roman archetypes and the style of Ancient Greece. 

In 1926, he constructed his first modernist house, and after this he continued his exploration by stripping away unnecessary adornments and (what he perceived as) clutter. How far can you go until a house is no longer a house? Do you need brick walls, or is it enough to have large glass panes from ceiling to floor? 

In 1929, he and his wife Lily Reich created his landmark project the German Pavilion for the Barcelona exposition (today often simply called the Barcelona Pavilion). The couple struggled with time constraints, as the Pavilion had to be completed within a year. In addition, they were on the verge of being broke. 

The intent was that the pavilion, to be presented in the international exhibition held in Barcelona this year, should represent the new Weimar Germany: democratic, progressive, prosperous, and pacifist. The building was transparent, showing that Germany had nothing to hide, a self-portrait through architecture, manifested through its free plan-design and seemingly floating roof. Inside, only a single sculpture (by Georg Kolbe) and the specially designed furniture (the today iconic Barcelona chair) were allowed. Because of the lightness of the design, van der Rohe could explore blurring the line between outdoor and indoor, essentially making the building appear as though it wasn’t really there. 

The floor plan is extremely simple, and the entire building rests on a plinth of travertine. A U-shaped enclosure forms a service annex and a large water basin. Another U-shaped wall, on the opposite side, forms a smaller water basin. “An ideal zone of tranquillity” was how van der Rohe himself explained the feeling of the space. The knowledge of stone that he accumulated as a child is present for everyone to see in the verdo antico marble and golden onyx he selected for the building. 

As it was planned to be only temporary, it was torn down in 1930, but reconstructed again in the 1980s by a group of Catalan architects.