Architectural and Politics: the Barcelona Pavilion - Essay Example

It was built 20 years before the Farnsworth house, which was identified as a noteworthy work of architecture in the twentieth century. The Pavilion was designed by Mies Van der Rohe's a German. Despite the building being in existence for more than eighty years, its power and influence have grown rather than dissipated in the more than eighty years of its existence.  Barcelona Pavilion’s broad context in Europe between the two world wars in which German was involved as the principal protagonist was infinitely more stimulating politically than that of the previous Farnsworth house built in Illinois, which was peaceful. Compared to other Pavilions of other countries, Barcelona Pavilion was built as a symbol of the nation that had reinvented itself as a contribution to an international exposition (Unwin 23-30).

After the Social-cultural mayhem of the First World War, which is historically known as the Weimar Republic, the Pavilion was seen as a symbol of a newly rediscovered republic. These social-cultural challenges and conditions coupled with the short duration, in which the project had to be designed, provoked Mies to produce one of the most Starling works of Architecture in history. A few years after the Pavilion was built, the National Socialist Movement and its leader Adolf Hitler who was a dictator took over power. They rejected modernism as an expression of German identity in favor of Monumental Classicism and austere public and governmental buildings and domestic buildings derived from traditional folk architecture. Mies moved to the United States in 1937 where he negotiated a site for design, and he oversaw and supervised the construction of the pavilion. He was given a platform to bring to realization the architectural ideas he had been exploring in the past decade. These ideas concerned the use of new construction techniques and materials, as well as the re-invention of the architectural space. After World War I horrors, there were ideas that promised a new cultural language of architecture, a new way of making sense of the world (Unwin 23-30).

Mies's development of this idea was influenced by his self-education in classical architecture and philosophy and fed by contemporary archeological discoveries. He exploited the fresh possibility of materials such as steel and a large sheet of glass put together without applied ornaments. Mie also used more traditional materials such as travertine a sedimentary rock quarried in Italy, polished marble from Greece and northwest Italy, and rare Onyx from North Africa (Simon Unwin 28).

Regardless of whether or not the political aspiration of Mies was ever met, the Barcelona pavilion has influenced many architects over the year on how individual architects can broadcast ideas through the medium of architecture that aspires to philosophical propositions. The Barcelona pavilion was dismantled immediately after the exposition and for half a century that preceded, it existed only in black and white photographs and some design drawings. However, in 1986, moves were made to recreate it and the building now stands on its original site, in Barcelona (Unwin 23-30).

The Barcelona Pavilion is one of the most mysterious, engaging, and hence most expansively discussed buildings in all architectural writing.  Some scholars have argued that the building should be called The German Pavilion in Barcelona. This is because it was being constructed as a temporary structure for the International exhibition in Barcelona in 1929. Although it was temporal, they argue that it was still made of permanent materials such as marble, glass, steel, and travertine (Unwin 23-30).

In conclusion, an analysis of the pavilion shows that work of architecture may be startlingly fresh and yet based on ancient ideas and that the design of a building may be a philosophical proposition in itself expressed in the composition of elements and how the space is organized rather than in words. Many architects have admired the architectural work of Mies which he also used to pass a political message that influenced the world order. However, some criticize the building as one that did not have any real program, and it was whatever Mies chose to make of it.