art in the city | precedents | Mies van der Rohe | Barcelona Pavilion, 1929
"Steel and glass are genuine building elements and the instruments of a new building art. They permit a measure of freedom in spatial composition that we will not relinquish any more. Only now we can articulate space freely, open it up and connect it to the landscape. Now it becomes clear again what a wall is, what is an opening, what is floor and what is ceiling. Simplicity of construction, clarity of tectonic means, and purity of material reflect the luminosity of original beauty."-Mies van der Rohe, 1929

The Barcelona Pavilion is an exhibition space that primarily exhibits spatial relationships. Its architecture frames, contains, compresses and extends space as its primary compositional element. It is an enclosed space that nonetheless expresses a connection to its surroundings though its transparency, play of reflections and the punctuation of its floor to ceiling openings. There is thus a distinct flux of space that renders ambiguous the distinct boundaries between interior and exterior. Perception is ordered within this architectural framework:

"Mies transformed the frame into a reflexive architectural element and an instrument for perception for exploring the realm between subjectivity and objectivity. No longer did the abstract ideal of a viewed construction provide the compositional model; rather its opposite, the perceptual frame or the construction of the view, served this role. As an essential architectural unit, the dialectical setting of podium and pavilion provided a thematic construct strong enough to reflect objectivity and subjectivity together, the self and the outer world."-Fritz Neumeyer, 1994 

In the top two images, we see how the observer has become an element of the spatial construction. From one position, the viewer gets the sense of being in an enclosed space, surrounded by walls from all sides. Steeping aside breaks this illusion and what was previously a wall is revealed as a slab:

"As such a modern viewing machine, which constructs the viewer by arranging a set of frames and sequential spaces, the building now appears in a morphological transformation whose complexity is revealed only by passing through and strolling around. The sublimity of stepping aside engenders a new kind of awareness of the whole - a process of discerning the self and the world in one. The structure constructs a viewer who himself constructs a coherent space when moving through it. This moving through the building entails an ambiguous play of opposites, with the viewer participating in the process of setting and abolishing boundaries through the opening and closing of vistas."-Fritz Neumeyer, 1994