MIES IN THE BASEMENT

8/17/2019 MIES IN THE BASEMENT

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Mies in the

Basement.

The Ordinary Confronts

the Exceptional in the

Barcelona Pavilions 1

Andrés Jaque

1 A f irs t v ers ion of thi s tex t w as pre sen ted at

the Col umb ia GSAP P S emi nar on Cri tic al, Cur a-

tor ial and Con cep tua l P rac tic es in Arc hit ect ure

ent itl ed “In ter pre tat ion s: Pro mis cuo us Enc oun -

ter s” on Mar ch 23, 201 2. The tex t w as pre sen ted

as an add res s t hat was cri tiq ued and dis cus sed

by Kell er Eas ter lin g, Mar kus Mie ss en and Fel ici ty

D. Sco tt, amo ng oth ers .

Fig . 1 Fra gme nts of gre y-t int ed gla ss sto red

in the bas eme nt of the Bar cel ona

Pavi lio n.

The Una cco unt ed -Fo r

Ina cce ssi ble Bas eme nt

Although not easy to recognise at first

sight, this photograph depicts some-

thing that is decisively shaping the way

most of us view a key item in the modern

architectural legacy: the basement of

the 1986 reconstruction of the German

Pavilion that Mies van der Rohe originally

built for the 1929 Barcelona International

Exhibit ion (F ig . 1 ). The original 1929

Pavil ion just had a foundation, but its1986 reconstruction included a reinforced

concrete underground enclosure, that

occupies the Pavilion’s entire footprint.

The pieces of broken glass leaning

against the concrete wall were originally

installed as one of the grey-t inted panes

that filter the light as one looks to the

southwest from the Pavilion’s main space

(although their shade is slightly lighter

than in the original glazing brought from

Germany in 1929).

In 2010, I was invited to create

an installation that was exhibited at the

Barcelona Pavilion itself in 2012. The

Pavilion is one of the most venerated

works of architecture, which means that

any intervention within it is read not

jus t a s a s elf -re fer enc ed act ion but al so

as a way to challenge architecture as a

discipline, and as a factual manifesto of

an architect’s practice and position. Any

transformation of the Pavilion’s image or

spatial configuration, even if temporary,

inevitably unleashes debates on the way

architecture evolves and how its bound-

aries are transformed. Seeking to avoid

any fetishistic or metaphysical approach

to the Pavilion, however, I decided to

init iate the process involved in designing

the installation by first taking stock of

the place as it stands now, in its actual

materiality. I wanted to make an inventory

of the Pavilion’s basic facts on a wholly

pragmatic basis: from the standpoint

of materials, maintenance and manage-

ment; to the way the building is pre-

served and reproduced as a piece of real,

everyday architecture; to the forms of

habitation into which it has been con-

f igured. And so I found myself under-

ground doing something no one had ever

attempted to do before: namely, taking

pictures of the hitherto unnoticed base-

ment of one of the most photographed

architectural icons of Modernity. The

Pavilion’s basement is the place where

an assortment of derelict items is hidden

from the eyes of visitors: red velvet cur-

tains that are beginning to fade, worn-

out white leather cushions from the

famous Barcelona chairs and stools, bro-

ken pieces of travertine that have been

replaced by new slabs (F ig . 2 , 3) .

The concept of transit seems tobe the key for understanding the actual

way that the Pavilion is constructed.

While the building has been characterized

many times as something that contains

the unchanged legacy of Modernity, it is

actually made out of transitory realit ies.

The Pavilion is not a snapshot of a single

moment, but instead a blurred photo

depicting layers of moving and transitory

realities. The Pavilion was a project to

bring the Weimar Republic into Barce-

lona, constructed by German architects,

in transit in a foreign city, on their way to

moving from one concept of architec-

ture to another, to represent a society

starting to gain distance from the post-

war in order to become something new.

The structure was made of materials that

had travelled from Algeria, Italy, and

Switzerland; opened by a king about to

leave the country for good; and later

reconstructed by architects willing to see

!"# !"!Jaque Jaque


2/12

Fig . 3 Fra gme nts of mar ble sto red in the

bas eme nt of the Bar cel ona Pavi lio n.

Fig . 4 Pro ps and equ ipm ent for eve nts sto red

in the bas eme nt of the Bar cel ona

Pavi lio n.

Fig . 2 Fadi ng cur tai ns sto red in the bas eme nt

of the Bar cel ona Pavi lio n.

!"" !"$Jaque Jaque


3/12

their polit ical and cultural environment

evolve, with the support of institutions

hoping to retell the history of Moder-

nity. The Pavilion was redesigned on

the basis of criteria which had already

shifted from Modernism to Postmod-

ernism, which then moved to the ‘land-

scape approach’ that is now being

challenged in the discussions unleashed

by new decisions required in the main-

tenance of the Pavilion, with arguments

related to ecosystemic thinking. The

two-story Pavilion seems to be the spe-

cific architectural translation of an

assembly of realit ies in the course of

changing. Many things have happened

in the last forty years. Works like those

by Cedric Price, Gordon Matta-Clark,

the International Situationists, Stalker

or Ant Farm—to list just a few—or very

recent social movements like 15M, Arab

Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Fair Trade

or LGTBQ have focused not on ‘final

states’ or non-evolving entit ies but on

the implications and features of symbolic,

material, polit ical and social transits.

The Barcelona Pavilion, precisely because

it was reconstructed for the impossible

project of freezing May 1929 reality,

required the development of a specific

architecture to deal with and hide the

change. It is not the German Pavilion anymore, but the translation of something

that was perceived as an immutable real-

ity (when it was not), precisely because

it was effectively working as a device

to manage change and make it invisible.

As part of a two-year research

project, I recorded long conversations

with people who had been involved in

the 1980s reconstruction of the Pavilion,

as well as with those in charge of its

management and maintenance, including

architects, public administrators, security

guards, gardeners, cleaning staff and

managers. While in aspects such as

form, composition and precious materi-

ality the Pavilion has been massively doc-

umented, its ordinary life has remained

an almost totally unstudied reality.2 This

discrepancy explains why the basement

has been an unknown entity for twenty-

f ive years.

One would normally expect

such things as distressed curtains and

glass fragments to be either somehow

reused or summarily thrown away, and yet

the Pavilion’s maintenance staff seem

to feel the contradictory need to both

preserve and hide this mass of assorted

clutter. The unseemliness or impropriety

of all these items in their current state

of decay is paradoxically accompanied

by the countervailing awareness that,

although as agi ng objects they may no

longer be fit to respond to the immediate

experience of the nev er- agi ng Pavilion

(or Mies van der Rohe’s sense of propriety,

for that matter), they nevertheless retain

a measure of value that justifies the

effort (rather extraordinary in the case of

the heavy travertine slabs) required for

their storage and preservation in the

basement. It is a game in which all these

un-dead, un-discarded fragments of the

Pavilion’s original brilliance are hidden

from view, allowing everyone to pretend

they did not exist, while their contin-ued existence is ensured all the same.

These hidden items are the architectural

equivalents of the eponymous picture

in Oscar Wilde’s Por tra it of Dor ia n G ray .

In the eyes of the people in charge of

maintaining the building, it is as though

the dilapidated pieces of velvet, glass

or travertine, by virtue of having once

been part of the Pavilion’s material sub-

stance, somehow magically retain the

structure’s soul: in other words, the

essence of Mies van der Rohe’s crit i-

cal programme. The visible presence of

these items on the ground floor would

paradoxically jeopardize this programme,

as they can no longer fully enact it in

their current ruinous condition. Like the

portrait in Wilde’s novel, they must be

simultaneously hidden and preserved for

the sake of what they on ce ideally

represented. The Pavilion’s basement is

also the space where a number of other

items are stored: mostly spare parts,

tools and machines with the power

to prevent us from seeing the qualit ies

of objects in and around the building—

the purity and transparency of water,

the shape of the bushes, the cleanliness

of the glazing—as evolving features

rather than permanent states (F ig. 4) .

All the hardware required to manufacture

an aesthetics of the unchanging, based

on images of a fixed, predictable nature,

needs of course to be kept out of sight

to hide the evidence that the world does

not actually match any of these proper-

ties. Likewise, in the basement’s north-

west area, the flags of Barcelona,

Catalonia, Europe, Germany and Spain

are preserved in brown boxes to dispel

any perception of the Pavilion’s politico-

institutional contexts as multiple or

controversial.3 In the central room one

can see a number of assorted props

and gear (spotlights, pedestals, micro-

phones, etc.) which are employed inevents for which the Pavilion is rented

on certain occasions, and then which

are immediately removed from sight and

carefully stored away after the end of

the functions.

At one end of the basement,

connected to the water filtering system of

the Pavilion’s larger pool, is a sink where

the staff wash the dishes they use

when they dine together around a plastic

table. On the wall right above the sink,

staff workers have carefully pinned pho-

tographs, portraits, exhibit ion flyers

and newspaper cut-outs—not so different

from those Mies himself employed to

envision and materialise his un-built

projects. Their shared intimacy and their

affective ties gain visibility there in the

basement, but leave no trace on the

floor above.

When reconstruction of the

Pavilion was in the design stage during

the 1980s, a point was reached where

a critical decision had to be made.

The architects then in charge of the

reconstruction—Cristian Cirici, Fernando

Ramos and Ignasi de Solà-Morales—

confronted an unavoidable problem:

whether or not to make the staircase

leading to the basement accessible

for people with disabilit ies in accord-

ance with current regulations. Eventually,

after a number of alternative schemes

were considered, the team of architects

decided that the only access to the

basement would be via a rather danger-

ous and uncomfortable sixty-three cm

wide spiral staircase. This design choice

was deliberately intended to pre-empt

the possibility that the basement would

ever be included in tours for visitors

to the Pavilion. Arguments were made as

to the role possible exhibitions located

in the basement might play in helping visitors understand various aspects of

the original 1929 Pavil ion and its 1986

reconstruction, such as their historical

and polit ical contexts; their underlying

technological and constructional materi-

ality; the locations in Algiers, Germany,

Egypt, and Italy where the building mate-

r ials had come from; or even the wealth

of documentary resources potentially

accruing from the partnership between

New York’s MoMA, the Stiftung Preussis-

cher Kulturbesitz in Berlin, the Escuela

3 The dif fic ult y m ay be con sid ere d o f att end ing

rep res ent ati ons tha t h ave cha nge d s inc e 1 929

as muc h a s the Ger man , E uro pea n o r S pan ish ,

or as con tro ver sia l a s t he Cat alo nia n o r, a gai n, the Spa nis h. Fur the rmo re, the Pavi lio n’s ent itl e-

men t h as evo lve d a nd pre sen ts rep res ent ati ona l

dif fic ult ies , i n t he way it pas sed fr om bei ng the

Weim ar Rep ubl ic’s Ger man Pavi lio n t o b eco min g

the Bar cel ona Pavi lio n. All the se con fli cts hav e

a m ate ria l w itn ess in the col lec tio n o f f lag s kept

in the bas eme nt.

4 Wit h t he dem oli tio n o f t he Ins tit uto Nac ion al

de Ind ust ria bui ldi ng (a con cre te str uct ure

loc ate d o n t he eas t s ide of the Bar cel ona Pavi l-

ion ) an opp or tun ity aro se to kee p i ts bas eme nt

as an int erp ret ati on cen ter con nec ted wit h t he

Pavi lio n’s bas eme nt. Thi s p oss ibi lit y w as dis -

cus sed and dis car ded . F ern and o R amo s i n c on-

ver sat ion wit h A ndr és Jaq ue. Bar cel ona , 2 012 .

2 It is inte res ting to see how thi s e llip sis of the

ord inar y b oth in arc hite ctu re and in its arc hive s

cons tit ute d a sha red sen sib ilit y i n t he 80s amon g

many Spa nis h a rch ite cts . F or ins tan ce, Ale jan -

dro de la Sot a w rot e i n 1 996 : “A s cru ff y p ers on

sho uld not ent er Mie s’ Bar cel ona Pavi lio n. Thi s

is imp or tan t [ …] Thi s app lie s t o p eop le. It

als o a ppl ies to thi ngs . You sho uld not hav e a

hou se ful l o f a rch ite ctu re tha t has bee n h idd en,

ful l o f thi ngs tha t a re vis ibl e. Arc hit ect ure

sel ect s thi ngs and peo ple . T hen we see , i n g ood

Architecture, when it is empty, people and things

tha t, w itho ut bein g t her e, are pre sen t. If the y a re

not the re, it is bec aus e t hei r p res enc e h as bee n

ren oun ced and goo d a rch ite ctu re is ful l o f all

sor ts of ren oun cem ent s.” De la Sot a, A. (19 86) .

Pabe lló n d e B arc elo na. Arquitectura 261–63, p.4.

!"% !"&Jaque Jaque


4/12

Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Bar-

celona and the Barcelona City Council—

all to no avail.

The overriding concern was—

and still is to this day—to preserve the

‘original experience’ of the building

as a reception space, shorn of any attr i-

butes suggesting any other possible

exhibition functions.4 Commitment to that

goal has been renewed on a daily basis

ever since the Pavilion was reconstructed.

When interviewed, the architect currently

in charge of supervising the maintenance

of the Pavilion stated: “When an event

is organized [such as a cocktail party or

the shooting of a commercial],5 I makesure that the look of the place remains,

as far as possible, the same as you

can see now: an empty space, let’s say,

with nothing in it. And what does that

mean? It involves a host of functional

difficulties, you know. But that [original

look] is what I have to protect, pre-

venting many things from being placed

here. […] When it comes to intervening

in the building, it’s important to ask

oneself what Mies van der Rohe would

have done. Don’t you agree?”6 This

reference to Mies’ criteria was already

vital during the process of reconstruct-

ing the Pavilion. The difference between

Mies’ a priori criteria and the interfer-ences of ordinary circumstances in shap-

ing the 1929 Pavilion became i mportant

from the very beginning of the recon-

struction work.

The study of the documents

and photographs that recorded the short

existence of the 1929 Pavil ion shows

that its design and material ity were

not as pure and coherent as the archi-

tects involved in the reconstruction

initial ly thought. They decided to make

a distinction between what they called

“Mies’ idea” and what they thou ght

had been the result of circumstantial

accidents. “Mies’ idea” was what they

had to reconstruct, and the other facts

were what they had to eliminate in

the reconstruction. This criterion was

disclosed in an ar ticle published by

Cirici, Ramos and Solà-Morales in 1983:

“If we talk about idea and material-

isation, it is because from the study ofthe project documentation and other

works by the architect from the same

period, we learn that the execution

of the building—either for economic

reasons, lack of time, or simply due to

technological l imitations—did not

always imply realisation of the idea that

before, during, and after was proposed

as characteristic of the building.”7 This

way of thinking, pervasive both in the

reconstruction and in the maintenance

of the Pavilion, proposes the improb-

able possibility of the autonomy between

ideas and circumstances. This approach

also suggests that, during the process

of reconstruction, the German Pavilion’svalue was considered to be that coming

from the unmediated translation of

Mies’ thinking into material architecture.

The Pavilion’s value was not accounted

for as the result of the confrontation

of a number of collective projects. Those

collective realities, when considered,

were mainly expressed in the shop-

discussions as problematic facts that

prevented Mies’ genius from fully devel-

oping. From my point of view, the story

could be explained in a different way.

Both pavilions might be seen as collec-

tive arenas in which a number of

sensitivit ies, interests, and projections

were confronted and experimented with.

From this perspective, the confl icts

between the preconceived ideas and the

way they were realized—like the lack

of t ime the fair authorit ies imposed in

1929, economical limitations, ideological

conflicts or technical decoupling—areactually what would need to be consid-

ered as the authentic outcome of the

two collective constructions.

The Pav il io n a s

Soc ia l C ons tr uct io n.

Co ll ect iv e A war ene ss vs .

Share d N on- Cal cul ab il it y

The function the basement serves can

thus be summarised in the following

terms: it is the mechanism whereby the

traces and reminders of all the negoti-

ations, experiments, accidents, discus-

sions, evolutions, and compromises thatdefine the Pavilion’s enduring existence—

through time, in nature, across differ-

ent polit ical contexts and varying eco-

nomic schemes—are hidden from visitors

and effectively rendered invisible; the

Pavilion’s basement, in other words, is

the place where the evidence left behind

by an important number of micro-stories

around the building’s existence, preser-

vation, and performance are bla ck- box ed.8

The Pavilion’s “Mies experienc e,”

as it is reproduced daily, seems not to

be possible if all the negotiations, com-

promises, experiments, and assemblies

that outline the building’s wider social

footprint did not remain unaccountable,

beyond scrutiny. Immersion in this expe-

rience therefore seems to require the

sustained omission of all that makes it

possible in the first place. From this

perspective, the architectural programmes

enacted by the Pavilion’s ground floor

(the Pavil ion proper as visitors see it)

and its basement could not be more

different in functional terms.

Conside ring the way that visitor s

relate to the building, it might be said

that the architecture of the ground floor

is designed to make visitors aware of a

number of selected realit ies, people and

stories—for example, materials: marble,

onyx, velvet, glass; Mies; Minimalism;

and Georg Kolbe’s Daw n, the sculpture

standing in the green pond. This aware-

ness is achieved through the interaction

of a number of carefully designed fea-

tures, ranging from the Pavilion’s loca-

t ion to its formal and spatial layout, and

its connection with the city. The base-

ment, in the way it is used to hide ordi-nary facts from visitors’ sight, generates

unawareness in the visitors, something

we might call sha red non-c al cul ab il ity .

Managing collectiv e awareness,

making things visible, creating and

challenging hierarchies, black-boxing or

setting obligatory passage points through

sections of reality, are tasks we normally

assign to the domain of polit ics. Upon

closer scrutiny, however, many of these

practices are observable in daily life

in connection with contraptions, technical

systems and devices—in this case, spiral

staircases, concrete walls, sinks, filter

systems, brown boxes with flags in them,

etc.—which, to a great extent, couldbe identified as architectural in nature.

Architecture tends to be understood

as a sustained endeavour to create new

realities—and yet, there is much to

be learnt from the role architecture plays

in making parts of daily life visible or

invisible, calculable or non-calculable,

prestigious or non-prestigious, accounted

for or unaccounted for. Among many other

things, the Barcelona Pavilion, in its two-

story form, is making these distinctions.

Wha t d oes i t m ean to be

an inh ab ita nt of

the two -st or y P avi li on?

Wha t c an we le arn fro m

the encou nte r b etw een

bot h f lo ors ?

The significance of all these issues in

the context of contemporary architectural

practice needs to be explained further.

As is invariably the case, architectural

5 It is imp or tan t t o n ote tha t eve n tho ugh

the 1929 Pavil ion was ver y m uch enga ged with the

tas k o f s ell ing the Ger man ind ust ry of the tim e,

and tha t t he str uct ure was par t o f a f air ori ent ed

to max imiz e c omm erc ial exc han ge, the re is a

hid den agr eem ent amo ng man y p eop le tha t i t

sho uld rem ain lib era ted fro m a ny com mer cia l o r

adv er tis ing eng age men t. Jus t t o p rov ide an exa m-

ple , A sce nsi ón Her nán dez Mar tín ez, in 200 4,

sta ted in an aca dem ic add res s: “[T he Bar cel ona

Pavi lio n] cur iou sly bec aus e o f i ts sym bol ic val ue

as an ico n o f mod er nit y i s fre que ntl y u sed as the sce ne of num ero us com mer cia l s hoo ts for

ver y d iff ere nt pro duc ts, tha t b y t he way pro duc e

in us a c er tai n s adn ess .” H ern ánd ez Mar tín ez,

A. (2004). “¿Copiar o no copiar? He ahí la

cue sti ón .” P ape r pre sen ted at the XV Con gre so

Nac ion al de His to ria del Ar te (CE HA) . Pal ma ,

Oct obe r 200 4.

6 Arc hit ect in cha rge of the mai nte nan ce of the

Pavi lio n i n c onv ers ati on wit h A ndr és Jaq ue, 201 1.

7 Cir ici , C ., Ram os, F., d e S olà -Mo ral es, I.

(19 83) . P roy ect o d e r eco nst ruc ció n d el pab ell ón

ale mán de la Exp osi ció n d e B arc elo na de 192 9.

Arquitecturas 44, p. 10–11.

8 “Bl ack -bo x” ref ers in net wor k t heo ry to a t ype

of dev ice who se inp uts and out put s a re acc oun t-

abl e, eve n t hou gh the tra nsf ere nce pro ces s

con nec tin g t hem rem ain s opa que and exc lud ed

fro m a ny for m o f s cru tin y.

R

F a u s t i n

o

! " '

!" ( Jaque Jaque "))


5/12

Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Bar-

celona and the Barcelona City Council—

all to no avail.

The overriding concern was—

and still is to this day—to preserve the

‘original experience’ of the building

as a reception space, shorn of any attr i-

butes suggesting any other possible

exhibition functions.4 Commitment to that

goal has been renewed on a daily basis

ever since the Pavilion was reconstructed.

When interviewed, the architect currently

in charge of supervising the maintenance

of the Pavilion stated: “When an event

is organized [such as a cocktail party or

the shooting of a commercial],5 I makesure that the look of the place remains,

as far as possible, the same as you

can see now: an empty space, let’s say,

with nothing in it. And what does that

mean? It involves a host of functional

difficulties, you know. But that [original

look] is what I have to protect, pre-

venting many things from being placed

here. […] When it comes to intervening

in the building, it’s important to ask

oneself what Mies van der Rohe would

have done. Don’t you agree?”6 This

reference to Mies’ criteria was already

vital during the process of reconstruct-

ing the Pavilion. The difference between

Mies’ a priori criteria and the interfer-ences of ordinary circumstances in shap-

ing the 1929 Pavilion became i mportant

from the very beginning of the recon-

struction work.

The study of the documents

and photographs that recorded the short

existence of the 1929 Pavilion shows

that its design and materiality were

not as pure and coherent as the archi-

tects involved in the reconstruction

initially thought. They decided to make

a distinction between what they called

“Mies’ idea” and what they thought

had been the result of circumstantial

accidents. “Mies’ idea” was what they

had to reconstruct, and the other facts

were what they had to eliminate in

the reconstruction. This criterion was

disclosed in an ar ticle published by

Cirici, Ramos and Solà-Morales in 1983:

“If we talk about idea and material-

isation, it is because from the study ofthe project documentation and other

works by the architect from the same

period, we learn that the execution

of the building—either for economic

reasons, lack of time, or simply due to

technological limitations—did not

always imply realisation of the idea that

before, during, and after was proposed

as characteristic of the building.”7 This

way of thinking, pervasive both in the

reconstruction and in the maintenance

of the Pavilion, proposes the improb-

able possibility of the autonomy between

ideas and circumstances. This approach

also suggests that, during the process

of reconstruction, the German Pavilion’svalue was considered to be that coming

from the unmediated translation of

Mies’ thinking into material architecture.

The Pavilion’s value was not accounted

for as the result of the confrontation

of a number of collective projects. Those

collective realities, when considered,

were mainly expressed in the shop-

discussions as problematic facts that

prevented Mies’ genius from fully devel-

oping. From my point of view, the story

could be explained in a different way.

Both pavilions might be seen as collec-

tive arenas in which a number of

sensitivit ies, interests, and projections

were confronted and experimented with.

From this perspective, the conflicts

between the preconceived ideas and the

way they were realized—like the lack

of t ime the fair authorit ies imposed in

1929, economical limitations, ideological

conflicts or technical decoupling—areactually what would need to be consid-

ered as the authentic outcome of the

two collective constructions.

The Pav il io n a s

Soc ia l C ons tr uct io n.

Co ll ect iv e A war ene ss vs .

Share d N on- Cal cul ab il it y

The function the basement serves can

thus be summarised in the following

terms: it is the mechanism whereby the

traces and reminders of all the negoti-

ations, experiments, accidents, discus-

sions, evolutions, and compromises thatdefine the Pavilion’s enduring existence—

through time, in nature, across differ-

ent polit ical contexts and varying eco-

nomic schemes—are hidden from visitors

and effectively rendered invisible; the

Pavilion’s basement, in other words, is

the place where the evidence left behind

by an important number of micro-stories

around the building’s existence, preser-

vation, and performance are bla ck- box ed.8

The Pavilion’s “Mies experienc e,”

as it is reproduced daily, seems not to

be possible if all the negotiations, com-

promises, experiments, and assemblies

that outline the building’s wider social

footprint did not remain unaccountable,

beyond scrutiny. Immersion in this expe-

rience therefore seems to require the

sustained omission of all that makes it

possible in the first place. From this

perspective, the architectural programmes

enacted by the Pavilion’s ground floor

(the Pavilion proper as visitors see it)

and its basement could not be more

different in functional terms.

Conside ring the way that visitor s

relate to the building, it might be said

that the architecture of the ground floor

is designed to make visitors aware of a

number of selected realit ies, people and

stories—for example, materials: marble,

onyx, velvet, glass; Mies; Minimalism;

and Georg Kolbe’s Daw n, the sculpture

standing in the green pond. This aware-

ness is achieved through the interaction

of a number of carefully designed fea-

tures, ranging from the Pavilion’s loca-

t ion to its formal and spatial layout, and

its connection with the city. The base-

ment, in the way it is used to hide ordi-nary facts from visitors’ sight, generates

unawareness in the visitors, something

we might call sha red non-c al cul ab il ity .

Managing collectiv e awareness,

making things visible, creating and

challenging hierarchies, black-boxing or

setting obligatory passage points through

sections of reality, are tasks we normally

assign to the domain of polit ics. Upon

closer scrutiny, however, many of these

practices are observable in daily life

in connection with contraptions, technical

systems and devices—in this case, spiral

staircases, concrete walls, sinks, filter

systems, brown boxes with flags in them,

etc.—which, to a great extent, couldbe identified as architectural in nature.

Architecture tends to be understood

as a sustained endeavour to create new

realities—and yet, there is much to

be learnt from the role architecture plays

in making parts of daily life visible or

invisible, calculable or non-calculable,

prestigious or non-prestigious, accounted

for or unaccounted for. Among many other

things, the Barcelona Pavilion, in its two-

story form, is making these distinctions.

Wha t d oes i t m ean to be

an inh ab ita nt of

the two -st or y P avi li on?

Wha t c an we le arn fro m

the encou nte r b etw een

bot h f lo ors ?

The significance of all these issues in

the context of contemporary architectural

practice needs to be explained further.

As is invariably the case, architectural

5 It is imp or tan t t o n ote tha t eve n tho ugh

the 1929 Pavil ion was ver y m uch enga ged with the

tas k o f s ell ing the Ger man ind ust ry of the tim e,

and tha t t he str uct ure was par t o f a f air ori ent ed

to max imiz e c omm erc ial exc han ge, the re is a

hid den agr eem ent amo ng man y p eop le tha t i t

sho uld rem ain lib era ted fro m a ny com mer cia l o r

adv er tis ing eng age men t. Jus t t o p rov ide an exa m-

ple , A sce nsi ón Her nán dez Mar tín ez, in 200 4,

sta ted in an aca dem ic add res s: “[T he Bar cel ona

Pavi lio n] cur iou sly bec aus e o f i ts sym bol ic val ue

as an ico n o f mod er nit y i s fre que ntl y u sed as the sce ne of num ero us com mer cia l s hoo ts for

ver y d iff ere nt pro duc ts, tha t b y t he way pro duc e

in us a c er tai n s adn ess .” H ern ánd ez Mar tín ez,

A. (2004). “¿Copiar o no copiar? He ahí la

cue sti ón .” P ape r pre sen ted at the XV Con gre so

Nac ion al de His to ria del Ar te (CE HA) . Pal ma ,

Oct obe r 200 4.

6 Arc hit ect in cha rge of the mai nte nan ce of the

Pavi lio n i n c onv ers ati on wit h A ndr és Jaq ue, 201 1.

7 Cir ici , C ., Ram os, F., d e S olà -Mo ral es, I.

(19 83) . P roy ect o d e r eco nst ruc ció n d el pab ell ón

ale mán de la Exp osi ció n d e B arc elo na de 192 9.

Arquitecturas 44, p. 10–11.

8 “Bl ack -bo x” ref ers in net wor k t heo ry to a t ype

of dev ice who se inp uts and out put s a re acc oun t-

abl e, eve n t hou gh the tra nsf ere nce pro ces s

con nec tin g t hem rem ain s opa que and exc lud ed

fro m a ny for m o f s cru tin y.

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formulations elicit responses, tr igger

dissent, cause unpredictable effects,

confront and negotiate with unforeseen

facts, and then evolve into completely

different end-results once they are

put into practice—all of which requires

analysis, as an explicit manifestation

of the complexity that defines a society.

When questioned on how the everyday

needs of the Pavilion staff were taken

into account when its reconstruction was

designed and implemented—where, for

instance, could they leave their clothes

or have lunch?—one of the architects

involved in the process admitted: “these

concerns did not arise until much later;we did not consider these issues when

we were reconstructing... [the Pavilion.]”9

A staff worker explained: “Work-

ing here is really tough sometimes. For

instance, there is no heating or air condi-

tioning, as there would be no way to

conceal the equipment. So in the winter

the place is freezing cold, and then in

the summertime it becomes an oven.

But I’m very much aware of how privileged

I am. I still remember the first day I

worked here and I got to see the sunset

over the city for the f irst time. The whole

Pavilion became an observatory.”10 An-

other former employee added: “Many

times, after a difficult day, being there[in the Pavilion’s central space] made me

feel relaxed. I experienced things re-

maining as they were, and even though I

might have had an awful day full of argu-

ments, there were still places where one

could get in touch with life’s essence.”11

It would seem, therefore, that it is not

the visitors but the staff who truly appre-

ciate the complexity of the Pavilion’s

twofold structure. Only they can see

both aspects of the building and expe-

rience them both as opposing yet

interconnected realit ies. Only they can

experience the Pavilion’s architecture

as the inhabitable controversy between

two ways of socialising daily life. The

first is an autonomous, self-referential

architecture based on the permanence

of essences, framed within apparently

unchanging notions, disconnected

from conflict and contingencies, fixedin its precious materiality, aimed at

excellence, presenting itself as a univer-

sal and self-consistent architecture.

This approach, however, would not be

viable without the support of everything

that falls under the rubric of the con-

tingent. For on the other side of the

dichotomy there is another way of social-

iz ing daily life based on contingency and

mutability; a different approach where

inconsistency and mu lt iv er sa li ty—

often resulting from a chain of events—

have a part to play, and components

are opportunistically assembled accord-

ing to availability rather than suitability.

This second architecture is composedof fragments in dispute, which are

bounded only by the way they interact

in daily life. It is only in this ordinary

interaction that their functional or crit ical

ensemble may be perceived.

Intervention at Mies van der Rohe Pavilion,

December 13, 2012 to February 27, 2013.

A project by Andrés Jaque, at the invitation

of the Fundació Mies van der Rohe and

Banc Sabadell Foundation.

Collaborators: Paola Pardo, Ana Olmedo,

Ruggero Agnolutto, Roberto González,

Jorge López Conde, William Mondejar,

Silvia Rodríguez, Dagmar Stéeova, Paloma

Villarmea, the Fundació Mies van der

Rohe team and spread.eu.com (graphicdesign).

PHANTOM.

Mies as Rendered

Society

Andrés Jaque /

Office for Political

Innovation

9 One of the arc hit ect s i nvo lve d i n t he dir ect ion

of the rec ons tr uct ion in con ver sat ion wit h A ndr és

Jaq ue. Bar cel ona , 2 012 .

10 A m emb er of the Pavi lio n s taf f in con ver sa-

tio n w ith And rés Jaq ue. Bar cel ona , 2 012 .

11 A f orm er mem ber of the Pavi lio n s taf f in con -

ver sat ion wit h A ndr és Jaq ue. Bar cel ona , 2 012 .

")' ")*Jaque Jaque


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