Mies referred to the Pavilion as a “Pavilion of Representation”. An Ephemeral building whose maximum value was to represent an idea. The aspect of the Pavilion that has endured is therefore an Evocation, not an object. A conceptual, not a material, act. A generator of thought, not a generator of physical space. Consequently, what remains of the Pavilion is the idea and its images. And mies ordered the Pavilion to be photographed without doors. In Mies’s thought and view, the Pavilion had no doors. in fact, the Pavilion existed in all its plenitude only when the doors were removed. the moment of the gaze is the only real moment.
The photographer proposes, through a minimal gesture, to restore the image of the Pavilion by removing the doors. The Pavilion without doors at last. At its side, doors without a building. The Pavilion reconstructed at last. And the doors out of their setting, by themselves generating the question posed by the intervention. The doors ask the question.
The building without doors is the answer.
Intervention Rendering by Jordi Bernadó.
Photographing is not only fabrication of images (and therefore objectual). It is above all a gaze (and therefore intellectual). The photographer gazes. And gazes, presumably and ironically, as Mies did. And curiously enough, it is thanks only to the gaze that the Pavilion once again becomes, temporarily, what Mies imagined. In this way, the Time factor is transformed also into a fundamental aspect of the project.
Concept, immateriality, time, deviation. Ideas with which Mies worked and which constitute the essence of the Pavilion. And which the project reclaims also. As Ms Hock said, “Gazing is inventing”.
Text.- by Jordi Bernadó.
Intervention “The Pavillon Mies van der Rohe. Second Reconstruction.”
Dates.- from March 13 to April 21, 2014.
Venue.- Mies van der Rohe Pavilion. Barcelona. Spain.
