Residency Post #1: The Barcelona Pavilion’s Double

This is a series of blogs posts about my residency at the Westminster Reference Library that coincides with my exhibition Not in View, which continues until 23rd February. Westminster Reference Library Gallery, 1st Floor; 35 Saint Martin’s Street, London WC2H 7HP

Sitting at a giant wooden table, I’m looking at some images in a book about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. One of his most well-known buildings is the Barcelona Pavilion, which was an exhibition building for the German section of the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona. No trade exhibitions were to happen within the building, allowing Mies to furnish it only with purpose-designed furniture and a single sculpture and creating a fluidity between the inside and the outside. The Pavilion was demolished in 1930. It was then reconstructed in 1986 with the aid of black and white photographs of the original as well as the original plans. This double of the pavilion survives until today.

The image in the book I’m looking at shows the original Pavilion during its short existence. There is a pool next to the pavilion. In the water the sharp angles of the building become sinuous lines; the outline of the building becomes an organic shape.

This reflection reminds me of Italo Calvino’s description of one city (from Invisible Cities): Valdrada. This city is reflected (and reproduced in its entirety) in the mirror surface of the river on whose banks its stands. In Valdrada, every house, window and geranium pot has a corresponding twin house, window and geranium pot in its reflection. The same city is seemingly repeated twice- yet it is not quite the same. As any mirror reflection, it is an inverted reflection. Valdrada has a double but it is not a perfect double.

In the image, the water in the pool drastically changes the pavilion’s image and reconstructs it on its own terms: fluid, amorphous and ghostly. The water has taken too many liberties with the pavilion’s image; the reflection has taken on an independent, shapeless existence. If this reflection is to be the double of the Mies’ Barcelona Pavilion, then the original must be significantly different from this pavilion at the pool’s edge.

The piece I made today is entitled: Barcelona Pavilion’s Reflection