The Barcelona international Exposition was inaugurated by King Alfonso XIII the 19th of May 1929. Barcelona hosted already another exhibition in 1888 and the event brought to the city the desire to organize a new exposition more daring and thematically incisive. For the new exhibition, Mies Van Der Rohe had the responsibility to design a structure to represent Germany and for that occasion he built the Barcellona pavilion which become one of his most iconic buildings(Morales, Cirici, Ramos, p. 6).
One of the reason the pavilion had a great impact was for the modernity of the material used. From the earlier drawing it’s clear that the architect thought about the presence of water , glass and marble(Morales, Cirici, Ramos, p. 13)
The pavilion had no function other than give prestige to the country it represented.
It had free standing walls which created open and closed spaces and a roof slab supported on eight steel columns of cruciform section. The only transverse wall was made of frosted glass to provide illumination inside and outside the pavilion. Also the Barcelona chairs made of steel bars and white leather cushions become iconic design object. The effect was of an essential harmony of proportions and unity of space where all the elements are combined together as pieces of a whole(Blaser, 28).
References:
W. Blaser, Mies Van Der Rohe, The art of structure,Thames and Hudson, 1965, Zurich.
I. Morlaes, C. Cirici, F. Ramos, Mies Van Der Rohe Barcelona Pavilion, 1993, Barcelona
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