Barcelona Pavilion (Mies van der Rohe)

Historic · Montjuïc, below Plaça d'Espanya (Sants-Montjuïc)Barcelona,Spain

A Barcelona platform and free-standing stone walls with nothing behind them, sold off in 1930 and put back on the same ground in 1986.

The Barcelona Pavilion is a low platform, a flat roof, and a set of free-standing stone walls with nothing behind them. Slabs of golden onyx, green marble and travertine stand at angles to each other, with glass between them and shallow pools of water outside, and there is no door you can point at as the entrance. You walk in around a wall rather than through an opening. Eight cross-shaped chrome columns carry the roof, so the walls can stand wherever they like. Germany needed a room at the international exhibition of 1929, and Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich gave it this: a building with nothing to exhibit but two chairs and a view framed in chrome. It stood for less than a year. In 1930 it was taken apart and the stone sold off, and for fifty years it existed only as photographs, which is how it became one of the most argued-over buildings of the century. Barcelona put it back between 1983 and 1986, on the same ground, with stone cut from the same quarries. Walk in now and there is still nothing to see but the building itself: stone, glass, water and light.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Early or late, never midday — the whole building is about reflection, and hard overhead sun kills the glass and the pools; low light puts the marble into the water and doubles every wall.
Shoot from the corners, not the front — the pavilion has no facade to face, and the frames that work are the diagonal ones where stone, glass and water overlap in one line of sight.
Twenty minutes is the visit — this is a single room and a courtyard, so slow down rather than covering ground; people who walk it once in three minutes come away thinking there is nothing here.
Check that the pools are full — the water is drained for maintenance from time to time and the building is used for events, either of which changes what you find on the platform.

Things to do

1
Find the four mirrored panels in the gold-brown slab
Take the main room slowly and look at each wall as a separate object. The gold-brown slab in the middle is cut so that its four panels mirror each other along the joins. The dark green wall behind it is a different stone altogether. Step to one side and both flatten back into plain marble.
2
Try to find the front door
Start at the road and approach the platform without looking for signs. There is no entrance in the usual sense: you go up steps, along the water, round the end of a wall, and you are inside without having gone through anything. Notice where you first felt you were in the building.