Originally published December 2017.
The Barcelona Pavilion, by Mies van der Rohe.
Over many years of working on numerous projects, I have always drawn inspiration from the work of some of the great architects from the past (borrowing from the past to enhance the future). Probably one of the most influential of these was Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) whose list of amazing projects have inspired so many modernist architects over the last 70 years or so.
There are of course so many of Mies’ wonderful buildings to choose from but I have narrowed it down to my favourite two, being the Seagram Building in New York (1958) and the Barcelona Pavilion (1929). I have chosen the latter for the simple reason that this building had a magical and timeless quality that, for my part, achieved an architectural perfection! It was designed as the German entrant for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona and it is an important building in the history of modern architecture.