mies van der rohe

mies van der rohe, biography
the barcelona pavilion was designed by mies van de rohe
as the german national pavilion for the 1929 barcelona
international exhibition, held on montjuïc.
the small ceremonial hall (for which he also designed the
famous chrome and leather 'barcelona chair'),
had a flat roof supported on chrome columns.
the steel skeletron and the pavilion’s walls,
rectangular planes of marble, glass, onyx placed
vertically or orizontally, could be freely positioned and made
it possible that space seems to flow through them.
this use of the open plan achieves extreme lightness
and movement. the pavilion was conceived as the setting in
which the german authorities would receive king alphonso XIII.
despite its initial disassembly after the close of the exhibition,
the pavilion has become a key reference point in both the career
of mies van der rohe and 20th-century architecture as a whole.
an emblematic work of modern-movement architecture,
the pavilion has not only been exhaustively studied and
interpreted, but it has also been a source of inspiration for the
work of several generations of architects all over the world.