German Pavilion in Barcelona
Introduction
The German Pavilion, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, was the representative building of Germany at the Barcelona International Exhibition held in 1929. Conceived as a representative space to house the official reception presided over by King Alfonso
This building constitutes one of the milestones in the history of modern architecture, being a work where the ideas of the then nascent Modern Movement are expressed with particular force and freedom, and is considered by many authors as one of the four canonical pieces of the architecture of the modern movement along with the Bauhaus building by Gropius, the Savoye villa by Le Corbusier and the Cascade House by Wright.[2].
The pavilion was dismantled after the exhibition in 1930, and later rebuilt in the 1980s in its original location, in Montjuic "Montjuic (Barcelona)"), where it remains open to the public.
History
In 1929, due to the successes obtained at the 1928 Werkbund Exhibition in Stuttgart, Mies and Reich were appointed artistic directors of the German section of the Barcelona International Exhibition "Barcelona International Exhibition (1929)"), for which the Pavilion was designed where the Barcelona chair was exhibited for the first time.[3].
The project was commissioned by the Weimar Republic in June 1928.[4] It was Mies himself who chose the location of the German pavilion within the exhibition grounds: although it had initially been assigned a place close to the magic fountain - the central axis of the fairgrounds designed by Cadafalch -, the architect preferred a place a little more secluded, away from the noise of the main axis where the large buildings built for the occasion were located.
Built with no function other than a merely representative one, the pavilion was intended to symbolize the ideals of progress and openness of the German state after the First World War. In the opening speech, Reich Commissar Georg von Schnitzler summarized: "We seek above all things clarity, simplicity and integrity".[4].
Despite the voices that requested the preservation of the building, the economic difficulties that the German state was going through caused the pavilion to be dismantled at the end of the exhibition, in January 1930. 1954, and at the initiative of the architect Oriol Bohigas, the idea of rebuilding the building in its original location began to take shape.[2] This initiative finally materialized in the 1980s. Work began in 1983 by the architects Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Cristian Cirici, Fernando Ramos and Ana Vila, and the reconstruction, based entirely on the original design and with the same materials, was inaugurated on 2 June 1986.[2].