Mies van der Rohe Pavilion

"The Barcelona Pavilion was designed by German architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich for the 1929 International Exposition—a global showcase of architectural styles. Exposition over, the pavilion was duly dismantled back to Germany. It was only in the decades after—cue: a face-palming moment of hindsight—that the architectural community realized just how pivotal Mies van der Rohe’s founding symbol of modernist architecture was. In 1980, Barcelona City Council enlisted a team of Catalan architects to turn salvaged photographs and drawings into a delicate, atmospheric reconstruction. Most people’s overarching takeaway from the Pavilion is that it’s smaller than they imagined, so use this as your battery recharge before tackling the other arty big-hitters on Montjuïc, such as Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) and Fundació Joan Miró." - Gemma Askham

"The Barcelona, or German, Pavilion was designed by Mies van der Rohe – one of the godfathers of rationalist architecture – to be the national pavilion of Germany for the International Expo of 1929, celebrated on Montjuïc. At the time it was considered to be a hugely unusual artefact which left the public astonished but a little disconcerted. “It only contains space. It has no practical purpose, material function,” wrote one critic. The pavilion was designed with a proportional composition, the interior extending between two bodies of water. The smaller of which, found in the inner courtyard, is illuminated by the light hitting the marble paving stones and decorated with a sculpture of the female form by Georg Kolbe. The larger body of water extends outside, creating an atmosphere which invites solitude and reflexion. Do you need any more reasons to go there?" - ZeClé