THE BARCELONA PAVILION AS LANDSCAPE GARDEN: MODERNITY and the PICTURESQUE Author(S): Caroline Constant Source: AA Files, No

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THE BARCELONA PAVILION AS LANDSCAPE GARDEN: MODERNITY AND THE PICTURESQUE Author(s): Caroline Constant Source: AA Files, No. 20 (Autumn 1990), pp. 46-54 Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29543706 . Accessed: 26/09/2014 12:50

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:50:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE BARCELONA PAVILION AS LANDSCAPE GARDEN

MODERNITY AND THE PICTURESQUE Caroline Constant

'A work of architecture must not stand as a finished and self afforded Mies the freedom to pursue the expressive possibilities of sufficient object. True and pure imagination, having once entered the discipline. During the 1920s he had begun to abandon the formal the stream of the idea that it expresses, has to expand forever logic of the classical idiom, with itsmimesis of man and nature, in beyond thiswork, and itmust venture out, leading ultimately to the favour of specifically architectural means. Many of Mies's con? infinite. Itmust be regarded as the point at which one can make an temporaries resorted to imagery from other sources, such as orderly entry into the unbreakable chain of the universe.'1 engineering, an expedient that bases its claim to validity on that discipline's objective nature. For Mies, however, artistic objec? To propose thatLudwig Mies van der Rohe conceived of his tivity derived from the assertion of differences rather than meta? German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona International phorical similarities. The meaning of the Barcelona Pavilion is not Exposition as a landscape may challenge conventional conveyed through a priori formal logic or the representation of readings of his architecture, although these have undergone con? some external reality but is given to sensual and temporal ex? siderable re-evaluation since 1986, when the Pavilion was recon? perience.8 While immersed in the experience of Mies's pavilion, structed on its original site.2 To assert his debt to the Picturesque the spectator is simultaneously distanced from it. Such contradic? in thiswork is a more subversive claim. After all, the Picturesque tions were nascent in the Picturesque. is associated with emotive appeal, formal eclecticism and artifice, The Picturesque is an elusive concept.9 Certain discrepancies while Mies identified his aims with rationalism, the rejection of arise from the term's etymological origins in painting. Alexander formal issues, and realism.3 Mies's debt to the Picturesque is not Pope first used it, in annotations to his translations of Homer, to ? as precedent; rather, itprovides a means to transcend the difficulty refer to a theme appropriate to a history painting one that of his work. Positing theBarcelona Pavilion within the Picturesque represents a significant human action based on verbal narrative and landscape tradition thus elicits speculation about both the build? conveyed iconographically.10 Pope conceived of his garden at ing's significance and the repressed role of the Picturesque in Twickenham in analogous terms; itwas a locus of human action, its modernism. meaning conveyed iconographically to the knowledgeable viewer There is only minor evidence inMies's writings to support this moving from object to object. By the late eighteenth century, claim, and it concerns a later project. Describing his Museum for a however, the term 'picturesque', as a result of its association with Small City (1943), he argued that 'the barrier between thework of the genre of landscape painting, was more commonly used to refer art and the living community is erased by a garden approach for the to the aesthetic qualities of irregularity, roughness and complexity ? display.'4 Similarly, the eighteenth-century English landscape and thus to the type of English garden devised to imitate nature. garden sought to dissolve the visual distinction between garden and In its appeal to the visual faculty, the Picturesque landscape depen? landscape. For Horace Walpole the ha-ha was 'the capital stroke, ded for itsmeaning on the interpretive powers of the individual the leading step to all that has followed'.5 He credited William imagination. Kent with the genius to discern its significance: 'He leaped the The assertion of aesthetic distance was a primary accomplish? ? fence, and saw that all nature was a garden.'6 In the Barcelona ment of the Picturesque an effect simulated by theClaude Glass, Pavilion Mies elaborated that earlier leap. Yet his challenge lay, not a darkened, concave mirror that could reduce a natural scene to fit in the visual extension of space, as numerous interpretations of the into the palm of a hand. While it renders Nature an object of Pavilion have claimed, but rather in the conceptual boundaries of manipulation, the Picturesque garden is perceived, not as a thing in the discipline. itself, but as a series of relationships that are gradually revealed to Any interpretation of the Barcelona Pavilion as landscape must themoving spectator. For Mies, as for the Picturesque landscape transcend Mies's tendency, like that of Schinkel (who inspired his designer, the lack of resolution inherent in such contradictions was early work), to challenge the formal boundaries between archi? the starting-point for the ongoing process of interpretation. tecture and landscape. As Mies argued, 'Form is not the aim of our The term 'pavilion' was first associated with garden structures work but only the result.'7 Indeed, the Pavilion's tectonic means for temporary shelter in the late seventeenth century;11 such are unquestionably architectural. With no programmatic con? buildings provided the architectural leitmotif of the English land? straints other than to represent the democratic Weimar Republic, scape garden, which emerged in the following century as a vehicle the commission to design the German Pavilion in Barcelona of the new sensibility. Likewise, the Barcelona Pavilion lacked a

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:50:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions specific programme; rather, it provided a momentary pause in an itinerary through the exposition grounds. Rejecting overt historical references, however, Mies undermined the object status of his structure. There are no fa9ades in the traditional sense. The need for boundaries between inside and outside, functionally necessary in most buildings, does not pertain. Thus the doors, positioned for security rather than to delimit threshold, were removed during exposition opening hours to preserve the spatial continuity. As a result, the Barcelona Pavilion is a labyrinth, a 'montage of con? tradictory, perceptual facts';12 itsmeaning is generated through the experience of a circuit that suggests parallels with those of the English landscape movement. Early plans (Fig. 1) indicate Mies's explicit use of Picturesque devices. He distributed three pedestals for statues throughout the Pavilion, each positioned to provide a focal point at the end of a major viewing axis. The sequence is analogous to the eighteenth ? century pictorial circuit a series of points at which a view is contrived to arrest the progress of the observer (Fig. 2). Moreover, thesemoments of stasis punctuate the experience and accentuate the discontinuities between sculpture and architecture, reflecting those between architecture and landscape in the earliest English land? scape gardens. Ultimately, Mies reduced the number of statues to one, that in the inner court (Fig. 1), to increase the continuity of the sequence. There is only one relative point of stasis, and it focuses, not on the statue, but on a wall of onyx doree, which Mies from the early conceptual stages endowed with iconic value. By eliminating these sculptural focal points, he rejected pictorial means and overcame a tendency common to the early Picturesque garden, that of focusing attention on objects rather than the landscape. This momentary pause relies, not on the contrast between architecture and sculpture, but between elements conceived as part of an architectural system and an isolated architectural element, elevated, like the single column in the Temple of Apollo at Bassae, to the level of the sacred.13 1. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: German Pavilion, International Mies's of means that of rejection pictorial goes beyond per? Exposition, Barcelona, 1928-9. Above: Floor plan, first preliminary certain formal similarities between his for a spective. Despite plan scheme. Pencil on tracing, 48.3x91.4 cm. Centre: Floor plan, second Brick Country House (1924) and Theo van Doesburg's painting preliminary scheme. Pencil, coloured pencil on tracing, 47.8x87.4 cm. Rhythms of a Russian Dance (1919), Mies denied that there were Below: Reconstruction of theplan as built. any de Stijl influences in his work.14 The differences are funda? mental. In their efforts to avoid a static, perspectival vantage point, de Stijl artists sought a more 'objective' point of view, exemplified by the axonometric. Mies departed from this conceptual mode by studying the Pavilion, not in plan, elevation, or axonometric view, but in a three-dimensional model. This consisted of a plasticine base on which planes of celluloid and cardboard covered with Japanese paper, simulating the Pavilion's material qualities, were manipu? lated to capture the perceptual character of the spatial sequence.15 Mies accorded primacy to the temporal experience in three dimensions, rather than to any unified conception of the building.16 In his choice of site Mies also sought to overcome the static quality of a picturesque object terminating a vista. He therefore rejected the original site, the indented corner of the Palace of Alfonso XIII to one side of the exposition's main axis, in favour of a site ending the major transverse axis. It lies along the primary route to the Spanish Village, a popular exposition attraction. Thus the Pavilion acts as a threshold between the formal layout of the Exposition grounds and a picturesque pastiche of Spanish vernacu? lar house types. This role was accentuated by a line of free-standing columns that originally framed the site, testimony to a prior histor icist impulse. This colonnade was an essential element of the sequence, a portent of the discontinuities that lay within. Mies's desire to control the visual sequence, evident in his 2. Plan of Chiswick House gardens. Engraving byJ. Rocque, 1736.

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:50:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions preliminary sketches (Fig. 3), was to remain the Pavilion's spatial leitmotif. The site offered the possibility of an extended view in only one direction, thatof the approach, yetMies thwarted any such extension by devising a series of non-aligned, transverse walls, in order to limit visual expansion to the Pavilion's longitudinal dimension, which he bracketed with end walls (Fig. 5). For Mies thewalls were the primary agents in the spatial sequence, unlike Le Corbusier, whose concept of the free plan relied on the structural and conceptual primacy of the columns. Mies's columns, intro? duced at a later stage in the design (Fig. 1), remained structurally ambiguous.17 His later recollection of the project reflects this difference: 'One evening as I was working late on the building I made a sketch of a free-standing wall, and I got a shock. I knew it was a new principle.'18 The distinction between 'object' and 'system' at the Barcelona Pavilion is relative, as there is no overriding geometric system. The cruciform columns delimit only approximate squares. Further? more, Mies used the paving grid to provide visual rather than mathematical order, adjusting the dimensions of the travertine blocks to align with the joints in the vertical surfaces. The spatial continuity is perceptual. The result is not 'universal' space, but ? space as a palpable entity a conceit that relies on separation rather than unity.19 While classical space results from the unified, hierarchical treatment of architectural elements, Mies gave priority neither to space nor to the elements, calling to mind Sidney Robinson's distinction between [classical] system and Picturesque 'connection':

5. German Pavilion, Barcelona. Perspective sketches of street elevation System, of course, clearly sets the terms for the connection of constituent (above) and garden elevation (below) ofpreliminary version, 1928. parts. Discovering the rule explains everything. Picturesque 'connection' is always in theprocess of being discovered. Saying what it is, finally, is not quite possible without reference to a level of abstractionwhich strikes one as begging the issue.20

The podium and columnar grid are frequently cited as evidence of Mies's tendency to resort to classicism.21 Yet neither is perceived as a whole: the end walls and reflecting pools interrupt the podium surface, while the spurious reading of the columns as a classical colonnade is possible only inplan. As Jose Quetglas has noted, each column exists in a distinct spatial context.22 Mies's shimmering cruciform columns support a similar contradiction: their formal precision dissolves under the visual distortion of their polished steel surfaces (Fig. 5). Rather than refer to some external reality, these elements all serve, like the partitions or roof slab, as mute testimony to the symbolic essence of architecture. In its silence Mies's architecture is cacophonous.23 The Pavilion is a montage of independent systems: travertine slab and plaster ceiling, chromium columns and marble partitions.(of travertine, Tinian, verd-antique and onyx doree), together with various tintsof glass (brown, green, milk, blue and black), all colliding visually in the polished, reflective surfaces (Fig. 5). The precision of the materials contrasts with their perceptual instability. Unlike the type of optical devices popular in the eighteenth century, which pro? ^^^^^ t'ij,|hh? BMb^bHi^^^I vided an illusion of control over nature, the reflective surfaces of Mies's Pavilion simulate the temporal flux of nature. Mies subjected all natural elements in the Pavilion to archi? tectural control. Vines are captured in a continuous planter atop the travertine walls of the entry court, while the lustrous green Tinian marble in the inner court echoes the cluster of trees beyond, affirming the distance between architecture and nature. The rear garden, a semicircular swathe level with the podium, was con? ceived as an extension of the Pavilion: its is in architecture 4. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: Friedrichstrasse office building. Project. origin nature. 'Nature' exists virtue of a Berlin, 1921. Perspective. Charcoal and pencil on brown paper, rather than by architecture, mounted to board. 173.3 x 121.9 cm. human construct, inverting Schinkel's famous dictum, 'Architec

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:50:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ture is the continuation of nature in her constructive activity.'24 Water was forMies a material comparable tomarble or steel. The inner pool, originally lined with black glass tiles, created the paradoxical illusion of limitless depth in the solid earth, contrasting with theouter pool, tiledwith blue glass (Fig. 5), which appeared shallow and reflected the infinite sky. Glass was a material of similar paradoxes. Not simply a transparent medium, it was a means to condition perception and shape space, as he demonstrated with his Project for a Glass Skyscraper, of 1922, and his Glass Room for the 1927 StuttgartWerkbund exhibition (Fig. 7). In a propagandist statement written for theUnion of Plate Glass Manu? facturers, he extolled itsmaterial properties: 'Only now can we give shape to space, open it, and link it to the landscape, thereby satisfyingmodern man's spatial needs.'25 Recent interpretations of Mies's use of glass vary from that of Tegethoff, who considers it 'the single, absolute prerequisite for a new conception of space ... by means of which space-defining walls may be reduced to a mere transparent membrane',26 to Tafiiri and Dal Co, who see it as 'an insuperable boundary'.27 Although glass could be regarded as themodern equivalent of the ha-ha, Mies was concerned primarily with its phenomenal qualities. Describing his Friedrichstrasse Sky? scraper of 1921 (Fig. 4), he explained: 'I discovered by working with actual glass models that the important thing is the play of reflections and not the effect of light and shadow as in ordinary ? buildings.'28 His use of tinted glass in the Barcelona Pavilion particularly the subtle distinction between the green glass facing the ? inner court and the brown tint of that to the front and back is a reminder that knowledge is contingent on perception. Such 'insol? uble dichotomies'29 ground the Pavilion in reality and open it to creative interpretation. Mies's realism derived from his conception of order, which dis? tanced him from the Utopian aspirations of theModern Movement. In his inaugural address at the Armour Institute of Technology . . . (1938), he argued that 'the idealistic principle of order with its overemphasis on the ideal and the formal, satisfies neither our inter? est in simple reality nor our practical sense. So we shall emphasize '30 the organic principle of order. This celebrates difference rather than imposing similarity, as he later elaborated: 'The real order is what St Augustine said about the disposition of equal and unequal things according to their nature.'31 Three elements fall outside this limited systemic treatment: the onyx wall, the luminous wall and George Kolbe's statue,Morning. The onyx wall (Fig. 5) is the Pavilion's only interior partition and the only one of thismaterial, one of theworld's rarest and costliest marbles. Its numinous quality derives from its distinctive colour rather than itsmaterial treatment,which links itwith other elements of the 'inner sanctum'. Contrary to claims put forward by some critics, that the size of the onyx block determined a module for the structure, itmerely determined the Pavilion's height and the length of thewall itself,which varies somewhat in the early plan studies. Indeed, Mies was careful to avoid mathematical correspondences among the Pavilion's components.32 The onyx wall marks the only relative point of repose in the composition, a deliberate departure from the conventional idea of shelter. The wall clings to the jet-black carpet at its base, as if by magnetic force. This is an attraction of opposites, for the carpet is a visual abyss, denying the possibility of occupation. This double paradox is underscored by its function as a dais for thewhite leather 'thrones' thatMies designed for theKing and Queen of Spain, who were to participate in the opening ceremonies. The implied stasis of the onyx wall is further disrupted by the horizontal seam at level that the in two. It recalls eye splits partition 5. German Pavilion, Barcelona, 1929. Entrance area looking north; the horizon, reinforcing the reading of the interior as a landscape, rear entrance; interiorview; and viewfrom the edge of the large pool.

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:50:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and evokes a passage thatMies underlined in his well-worn 1918 edition of Oswald Spengler's Decline of theWest: 'In analogizing the horizon with the future, our age identifies itselfwith the third dimension of experienced space.'33 Critics have persisted in interpreting the onyx wall as the heart of the composition. Curiously, however, there has been littlemention of an equally significant phenomenon: the luminous volume (Fig. 6) that lies closer to thePavilion's geometric centre. It appears only peripherally in the published photographs; moreover, its sensual qualities seem to elude photographic representation. This inaccessible void bounded by etched glass was the only building element thatMies adjusted to conform to the paving grid (Fig. 1). Originally conceived as a thin,wall-like element, itwas ultimately Wtt^Bs^^e^ ...^i^HIH realized as a volume of light. Embodying an element of nature, it has certain attributes of a courtyard but, like the entry court and the inner sculpture court, it can be occupied only in the imagination. A comparable luminosity in the inner court (Fig. 6), which is continually bathed in sunlight, is visible upon mounting the podium and serves to draw the spectator in. In contrast, the ineffable qualities of the luminous wall can be perceived only fromwithin. Its end walls of verd-antique marble and black glass (Fig. 6) render it invisible from the entry stair or rear garden, while the sunlight of the outer court counteracts its phenomenal presence from that direction (Fig. 5). There is a precedent inMies's work for this 'garden of light'. In his Glass Room for theWerkbund exhibition, he included two inaccessible spaces: a sculpture court and a garden court. The first ^^^S^B ^^H^^l b^^^^h of these two spaces, bounded by glass walls and housing a female torso by the sculptor Leehmbruck (Fig. 7), accentuated the simul? taneously transparent and reflective properties of glass.34 The statue seems entombed in a world removed from human occu? pation. The second court, containing three ungainly potted plants (Fig. 7), was the only space in the exhibition not bounded by glass or capped by stretched fabric. While it provided a suggestion of open air within an enclosed volume, itwas at the same time remote from nature, rendering ita lifeless relic, framed and isolated for the purpose of contemplation. In contrast, the luminous court of the Barcelona Pavilion has an ineffable quality. Its light seems to emanate magically fromwithin, like the autonomous light source of a cubist painting. Nature is rendered as lightwithin an architectural frame of steel and glass, a garden in themachine. The luminous court alludes to the spiritual otherness of nature, its objectification, in contrast to the naive aspiration for communion with nature that was associated with Modern Movement ideals. For Mies architecture was a vehicle for nature to reveal itself toman. Kolbe's statue (Fig. 6) is the Pavilion's only anthropomorphic element. within the innermost itdominates a 6. German Pavilion, Barcelona, 1929. Viewfrom thegarden showing Axially aligned court, a the illuminatedwall; view towards the small pool; King Alfonso XIII and space denied to human occupation. Rather than providing goal in theKolbe sculpture. the sequence, it stands for the absent spectator. Like the contrived, scenographic effects of the Picturesque garden, Mies's architecture renders the spectator an active participant in the scene; yet here the stage remains empty, the actor/spectator distanced. Grete Tugendhat has described the effects of Mies's architecture on its occupants in similar terms: 'For just as one sees each flower in this room in quite an uncommon way, and every piece of art seems more expressive (for example, a piece of sculpture standing in frontof the onyx wall), so too a person appears, both to himself and to others, to be more clearly set off from his surroundings.'35 Despite its overwhelming interiority, the Pavilion resists inhabitation. The role of the spectator is fleeting, transitory. The reflective surfaces of glass, polished marble and chromium-plated steel absorb any human presence, casting doubt even on the body's own substance,

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:50:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions just as the Pavilion's architectural language denies itsmetaphoric presence. The selfmerges with the other as fleeting ephemera in the cumulative layers of reflection. Unlike the tendency of the Picturesque to miniaturize architec? ture,Kolbe's statue expands the Pavilion's apparent scale. The ob? server, measuring himself against the oversized figure (Fig. 6), is humbled. This experience of the statue within the labyrinthine con? figuration augments the Pavilion's material presence to overcome its seeming limitation of size. Mies's structure rivals themassive palace of Alfonso XIII on the hill directly above, yet it does so ? through anti-classical means denial of its object status and of symbolic references toman or nature. The luminous wall, the onyx dor?e wall and the statue are unique elements in the Pavilion: all participate in its hierarchical 'centre'. As a sequence they refer respectively to themetaphysical realm, the material realm and the realm of human occupation, representing the paradoxical means by which Mies strove 'to bring Nature, man, ? and architecture together in a higher unity'36 by asserting their mutual distance. Just as each element asserts its independent status, so the Pavilion asserts its independence from the context towhich it is inextricably bound. Approached from the symmetrical transverse axis, the podium establishes a caesura with the classical space of theExpos? ition grounds, creating theworld anew and celebrating architecture as a human construct. The podium is a boundary, a templum of space hewn out of the surrounding landscape, replacing the garden wall. Mies denied itany classical reference to the earth or to its axial approach; instead, the end walls ground the Pavilion in the earth, and the entrance is displaced to one side. Behind the Pavilion, however, Mies reversed this arrangement by raising the ground to the level of the podium and re-establishing the symmetry of the approach. In the transverse direction, travertine walls that echo the base of the adjoining palace terminate the expansive walls of green Tinian marble that reflect the canopy of surrounding trees. The Pavilion arises from the particular circumstances of the site, yet dis? tances itself from the classical conditions of its context. It is both a critical reinterpretation of itsworldly situation and an affirmation of reality. Irreducibly architectural, the Pavilion was a vehicle for Mies to dismantle the dialectic opposition of the city and the country and to recompose a continuum conceived in terms of landscape. Mies's as a of in the marble experience youth assisting family 7. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: Glqss Room, Werkbund Exhibition, atelier in and his admiration for thework of Schinkel Aachen, early Stuttgart, 1927. View towards the sculpture; and view towards the living to with the and Berlage, undoubtedly contributed his obsession area and winter garden. visual properties of materials. A more direct influence, however, was his collaboration during the 1920s and 1930s with Lily Reich, a textile and fashion designer, and fellow member of theDeutscher Werkbund, with whom he designed a number of exhibition install? ations, including that in Barcelona. Their Silk and Velvet Cafe at the 1927 Berlin fashion exposition (Fig. 8), which celebrated the fluid, diaphanous and reflective properties of these fabrics, was a significant precursor to the Barcelona Pavilion, where Mies achieved similar effects with the solidity ofmarble, steel and glass. Yet this concern with materials also had a deeper, philosophical basis, for Spengler's The Decline of theWest had inspired Mies to attempt to transcend the 'material' implications of post Enlightenment 'civilization' by reinstating the 'spiritual' dimen? sions of 'culture'.37 The material qualities of the Barcelona Pavilion parallel those of ? an element of early English landscape gardens the grotto, such as that of c. 1724 in the base of Alexander Pope's house at Twicken? ham (Fig. 9).38 This grotto incorporated an elaborate display of on the poet's extensive collection of mineral specimens, modelled 8. Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich: Silk and Velvet Cafe, Exposition the type of Italian grotto that eighteenth-century British visitors de laMode, Berlin, 1927.

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:50:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions described as a cabinet of curiosities, an antecedent of themodern museum. Indeed, Pope proclaimed his grotto a 'Musaeum', or home of themuses.39 Moreover, his concern with visual effects is reflected in the two optical devices he incorporated in the grotto: it operated both as a 'perspectival glass' through which to view the river from the Shell Temple that stood in the garden opposite and as a sort of camera obscura which projected images of the outside world upon the grotto's reflective interior surfaces.40 These con? tributed to its power, like the garden itself, both to signify a world apart and to be a mirror of the larger world. A visitor of 1747 described its effects in terms that are startlingly reminiscent of the Barcelona Pavilion:

To multiply thisDiversity, and stillmore increase theDelight, Mr. Pope's poetic Genius has introduced a kind ofMachinery, which performs the same Part in theGrotto thatsupernal Powers and incorporealBeings act in the heroick Species of Poetry: This is effected by disposing Plates of Looking glass in the obscure Parts of the Roof and Sides of theCave, where sufficientForce ofLight iswanting todiscover theDeception, while the other parts, the Rills, Fountains, Flints, Pebbles, etc. being duly illuminated, are so reflected by the various posited Mirrors, as without exposing the Cause, every Object ismultiplied, and its Position repre? . . . sented in a surprisingDiversity. Thus, by a fine taste and happy Management of Nature, you are presented with an undistinguishable Mixture of Realities and Imagery.41

9. Alexander Pope in his grotto, byWilliam Kent. It is well known that Pope and his circle, which included Lord Burlington and William Kent, intended that their gardens should serve a larger aim, that of embodying on English soil a classical civilization emulating that of the ancients. Unlike its antique ? counterparts, however, Pope's grotto like theBarcelona Pavilion ? incorporated no allusions to literature or mythology. Its effects were conveyed primarily through an appeal to the individual imagination. As John Dixon Hunt has argued, Pope's vision was distinguished by 'this very awareness of what could not be achieved, except in themind's eye.'42 In the Barcelona Pavilion Mies deployed a similar strategy. Charged with designing a German Repr?sentationsraum, with implications for serving formal or ceremonial rather than utilitarian purposes, he rejected emblematic motifs or signs. The architecture alone expresses the Pavilion's role as a symbol of the modern, progressive state of Germany, represented internationally for the first time in Barcelona. Two flags flanking the entrance were its sole representational devices. There is another, more immediate parallel to Mies's use of materials: the Italian grotto as a conspectus of natural and artificial a wonders had counterpart in theWunderkammer (Fig. 10).43 The was seen collection as a metaphor for the world. Its underlying order, like that of the Pavilion, was based on aesthetic rather than scientific criteria, with objects grouped according tomaterial, for example. The Barcelona Pavilion shares with theWunderkammer the aim of epitomizing a sense of mystery and wonder rather than offering rational explication. Where the cabinet of curiosities orig? inated in response to the crisis of values following the breakdown of Renaissance certainties, Mies's Pavilion reflects a comparable 10. Ferrante Imperato 'smuseum inNaples, from his Historia Naturale, the era. Naples, 1599. phenomenon during post-Enlightenment

Historically, the garden has been an essential form of expres? ? sion a reflection ofman's relationship to nature and a re constitution of theworld inmicrocosm. That role has been largely abrogated in the twentieth century. Once the art of garden? ing began to dissociate itself from architecture and ally itselfwith landscape, it attained its greatest cultural significance, yet simul? taneously initiated its decline as a fine art.44 Like the garden, the Barcelona Pavilion is a pure instrument of meaning: it represents

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:50:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 11. Mies van der Rohe: Tugendhat |HHH| House. Brno, Czechoslovakia, 1930. room. ^^^^M Living ^^^^H

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a break with reality, constituted historically, yet poses itself as an becomes a part of a larger whole.'47 alternative reality. Here Mies revealed the possibility to transcend Mies transformed the Picturesque dichotomy between stasis and the decorative and sentimental limits of themodern garden and to motion into a dichotomy of form and perception, thereby dis? recover its intrinsic value, without resort tomimesis, by reinstating allowing any stable interpretation. Meaning is initiated rather than its architectural essence. He created an architecture analogous to imposed, recalling the idea of the Picturesque circuit as a route to thefleeting understanding of a world where absolutes are no longer knowledge. If the Picturesque introduced the element of doubt, possible. His affirmation of the power of architecture to embody a Mies recognized the potential for creative interpretation that fragmented, fractured world view is indebted to the reversal of the accompanies a modern perspective of the limitations of knowledge. traditional hierarchy of architecture and landscape that took place in With the Barcelona Pavilion, he modified pur understanding of the the eighteenth century. As David Watkin has argued, rather than Picturesque to invest itwith a generative importance that it had conceive of landscape as an extension of architecture, the Pictur? previously lacked, exemplifying the aim of modernism not simply esque provided the inspiration to conceive of architecture as land? to break with the historical past but, rather, 'to attempt to equal its scape.45 Mies's work transcends the eighteenth-century distinction highest achievements under new and difficult conditions'.48 between a rationalized and a representational view of nature, a The Barcelona Pavilion fulfilsMies's dictum that 'Architecture is '49 formal debate that still has not subsided. The distinction between thewill of an epoch translated into space; living, changing, new. the geometric garden and the 'natural' garden was itself a product Its shifting nuances of meaning reflect 'the central problem of our ? of the Picturesque emphasis on formal values. Each is contrived, time the intensification of life.'50 Schinkel put it less succinctly: the product of human action; each was inspired by the dialectic 'Striving, budding, crystallizing, unfolding, driving, splitting, fit? between formal and informal that existed in the gardens of antiquity ting, drifting, floating, pulling, pressing, bending, bearing, plac? . . . and of Renaissance Italy. The differences lie primarily in diverging ing, vibrating, connecting, holding, lying and resting these are attitudes to nature and to man's role in the natural world.46 Mies the ways inwhich architecture must manifest life.'51 rejected themyth of raw nature as a pure datum, independent of human thatwas theModern action, being promoted by Movement; Notes instead, nature exists only by virtue of being interpreted. Mies 1. Quotation from K. F. Schinkel, inHans Karl Friedrich Schinkel: overcame the pictorial limitations of the Picturesque. Transcending Mackowsky, Briefe, Tagebucher, Gedanken (Berlin, 1922), pp. 192-3; quoted inHermann the appearance of nature, he affirmed the power of architecture to G. Pundt, Schinkel 'sBerlin: A inEnvironmental achieve the status of nature. Study Planning (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), p. 195. Mies's on the idea of nature fleeting accomplishment depended 2. See Wolf Tegethoff, Mies van der Rohe: The Villas and Country Houses (New as that remote. something is physically With the conservatories York, 1985), pp. 70-89; K. Michael Hays, 'Critical Architecture: Between of the Tugendhat house (Fig. 11) and theNolde house, the gardens Form and Culture', Perspecta 21 (1984), pp. 14-29; Jose Quetglas, Tear of of the court-houses, and the scenic views from the Resor house Glass: The Barcelona Pavilion', Revisions, edited by Beatriz Colomina 123-51. and the Farns worth house, he returned to a pictorial treatment of (Princeton, 1988), pp. 3. 'We refuse to recognize problems of form, but only problems of building. nature. Nature was again enframed, its eighteenth-century status Form is not the aim of our work, but only the result.' From G, no. 2 (1923); restored. For Mies the contemplation of nature from afar was quoted in Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe (New York, 1947), p. 184. 'We to it 'When see nature superior experiencing directly: you through do not respect flights of the spirit as much as we value reason and realism'. a the glass walls of the Farns worth House, it gets deeper meaning From Der Querschnitt (1924); ibid. p. 187. than [from] outside. More is asked for from nature, because it 4. Architectural Forum 78 (May 1943), pp. 84-5.

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:50:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 5. Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting (1771), vol. IV, pp. 137-8; quoted in 26. Idem. Isabel Chase, Horace Walpole: Gardenist (Princeton, 1943), p. 25. 27. TafuriandDalCo(1986),p. 132. 6. Idem. 28. 'Hochhausprojekt f?r Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse in Berlin', Fr?hlicht, 1 7. G, no. 2 (1923); inJohnson (1947), p. 184. (1922), pp. 122-4; inJohnson (1947), p. 182. 8. K. Michael Hays, 'Critical Architecture Between Culture and Form', 29. TafuriandDalCo(1986),p. 131. Perspecta 21 (1984), p. 24. Hays terms Mies's work 'critical architecture', 30. Inaugural Address as Director of Architecture at Armour Institute of which he defines 'in its difference from other cultural manifestations and Technology, 1938; in Johnson (1947), p. 194. from a priori categories or methods'. 31. Interview, 1959; in Carter (1974), p. 180. 9. Eighteenth-century discussions of the Picturesque vary, from focusing on the 32. SeeTegethoff(1985),pp. 76-8. qualities of the object, to the psychological effects on the moving spectator. 33. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Munich, 1918), 1, Such discrepancies were the basis of the 'Picturesque Controversy' carried on p. 331; cited in Franz Schulze, Mies Van Der Rohe: A Critical Biography by Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price during the 1790s. Yve-Alain (Chicago, 1985), p. 116. Bois remarks on the mutually exclusive moments of the Picturesque in 'A 34. Robin Evans points out the visual parallels between the luminous wall and the ? Picturesque Stroll Around Clara-Clara', October!*) (Summer 1984), p. 36. ceiling of the Glass Room a taut fabric membrane lit from above by 10. Pope never applied the term 'picturesque' to landscape, although in other skylights. Lecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 20 October 1988. contexts he generally used it to refer to a setting appropriate to themes 35. Die Form, 6, no. 11(15 November 1931), pp. 437ff.; inTegethoff (1985), depicted in poetry or painting. John Dixon Hunt, 'Ut Pictura Poesis, Ut p. 97. Pictura Hortus, and the Picturesque', Word and Image I, no. 1 (Jan-March 36. Interview,1958; inTegethoff (1985), p. 13. 1985), pp. 88-90. 37. Peter Carter, in 'Mies', Twentieth Century, Spring 1964, p. 139. . . . 11. The Compact Edition of theOxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 1971), 38. John Serie, A Plan ofMr. Pope's Garden (1745), pp. 5-10. The grotto p.572. survives, although the house was demolished in 1807; by 1760, Pope's 12. Hays (1984), p. 24. Mies claimed that, when the German government first successor to the property, William Stanhope, had mutilated the garden beyond approached him about the commission, he replied: 'What is a pavilion? I have recognition, according to Horace Walpole. Letter to Mann, 20 July 1760; . . . not the slightest idea. I must say that itwas themost difficult work which XXI, 417. ever confronted me, because I was my own client; I could do what I liked. But 39. Alexander Pope, The Correspondence, edited by George Cherubin (Oxford, I did not know what a pavilion should be.' Quoted inH. T. Cadbury Brown, 1956), vol. IV, p. 262. 'Ludwig Mies van der Rohe', Architectural Association Journal (July 40. 'From the River Thames, you see thru' my Arch up aWalk of theWilderness August 1959), pp. 27-8. to a kind of open Temple, wholly composed of Shells in the Rustic Manner; 13. See Ludwig Glaeser, Mies van der Rohe: The Barcelona Pavilion (New York, and from that distance under the Temple you look down thru' a sloping Arcade 1979), unpaginated. He deems the onyx wall equivalent to an altarpiece. Cited of Trees, and see the Sails on the River passing suddenly and vanishing, as in Tegethoff (1985), p. 81. Tegethoff also finds analogies between the inner thru' a Perspective Glass. When you shut the Doors of this Grotto, itbecomes court and the cella of a Greek temple: neither can be occupied except by the on the instant, from a luminous Room, a Camera Obscura: on theWalls of ? cult figure in the Pavilion, Kolbe's statue. Ibid. p. 80. which all the objects of the River, Hills, Woods, and Boats, are forming a 14. On Mondrian's influence, Mies stated: 'I think that was a mistake that the moving Picture in their visible Radiations: And when you have a mind to light ... Museum of Modern Art made. I never make a painting when I want to it up, it.aff?rds you a very different Scene: its finished with Shells interspersed build a house. We like to draw our plans carefully and that is why they were with Pieces of Looking-glass in angular forms; and in the Ceiling is a Star of taken as a kind of painting.' Quoted in Peter Carter, Mies van der Rohe at the same Material, at which when a Lamp (of an orbicular Figure of thin Work (NewYork, 1974),p. 180. Alabaster) is hung in the Middle, a thousand pointed Rays glitter and are 15. Tegethoff(1985), p. 75. reflected over the Place.' Pope, Correspondence, II, pp.296-7. 16. Mies's interest in repetition in the later work was a variation on this idea. 41. 'An Epistolary Description of the Late Mr. Pope's House and Gardens at 17. As Robin Evans notes, the columns, owing to their extremely thin propor? Twickenham' (1747), reprinted from The General Magazine of Newcastle tions, appear insufficient to support the roof; indeed, the steel frame support? (January 1748), inMack, The Garden and the City, and in Hunt and Willis, ing the marble walls contributes equally to the Pavilion's structural stability. The Genius of thePlace: The EnglishLandscape Garden 1620-1820 (New Lecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 20 October 1988. York, 1975), pp. 249-50. 18. Interview, 13 February 1952: '6 Students Talk with Mies', Master Builder, stu? 42. John Dixon Hunt, Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the dent publication of the School of Design, North Carolina State College, vol. 2, English Imagination: 1600-1750 (Princeton, 1986), p. 200. no. 3 (spring 1952), p. 28. Credit for discovering the free plan must go to Le 43. I am grateful toMiroslava Benes for this observation. Corbusier; he first published 'Five Points of a New Architecture', in Alfred 44. Paul O. Kristeller, 'The Modern System of the Arts', inRenaissance Thought Roth, Zwei Wohnhauser von Le Corbusier und Pierre Jeanner et (Stuttgart, and the Arts: Collected Essays (Princeton, 1980), p. 226. 1928), pp. 8-9, in conjunction with the housing project he carried out with 45. David Watkin, The English Vision (New York, 1982), pp. ix-x. Pierre Jeanneret for theWiessenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, which Mies directed. 46. See John Dixon Hunt (1986), pp. 90-99. 19. In this Mies acknowledged the influence of Schinkel 's Altes Museum: 'He 47. Christian Norberg-Schulz, 'Talks with Mies van der Rohe', L'Architecture separated the elements, the columns and the walls and the ceiling, and I think d'aujourd'hui, 29, no.79 (September 1958), p. 100. that is still visible inmy later buildings.' Carter (1974), p. 182. 48. See Michael Fried, 'How Modernism Works: A Response to T. J. Clark', 20. Sidney K. Robinson, 'ThePicturesque: Sinister Dishevelment', Thresholds Critical Inquiry, 9:1 (September 1982), pp. 225-7. (Spring1988), p. 80. 49. G, no. 1 (1923); inJohnson (1947), p. 183. On 21. See Kenneth Frampton, 'Modernism and Tradition in theWork of Mies van 50. D/eForm (1928); inJohnson (1947), p. 190. der Rohe, 1920-1968', in Mies Reconsidered: His Career, Legacy, and 51. Mackowsky (1922), pp. 192-3; inPundt(1972), p. 195. Disciples, edited by John Zukowsky (Chicago, 1986), pp. 41-3; for discus? sion of Mies's neo-classicism, see Colin Rowe, 'Neoclassicism and Modern Architecture', Oppositions I (1973), pp. 1-26. 22. Quetglas (1988), p. 136. Acknowledgements 23. On the 'silence' of Mies's architecture, see Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Figs. 1 (above and centre), 4: Collection of the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Dal Co, Modern Architecture/1(New York, 1986), p. 134,and Hays (1984), Archive, theMuseum ofModern Art, New York; Figs. 1 (below), 6 (above): from p. 22. Wolf Tegethoff,Mies van derRohe: Die Villen undLandshausprojekte (1981); O 24. Goerd Peschken, Karl Friedrich Schinkel Lebenswerk, XIV: Das Architekton? Fig. 3: Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin ische Lehrbuch (Munich, 1979), p. 35. Quoted in Barry Bergdoll, 'Karl (photo: Paulmann-Jungeblut, Berlin); 5, 6 (centre), 8, 11; courtesy the Figs. of ? Friedrich Schinkel', MacMillan Encyclopedia of Architects, vol. 3 (New Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Archive, theMuseum ofModern Art, New York; York, 1982), p. 682. Fig. 6 (below): Carrer de la Cuitat; Fig. 7: Die Form, 1928; Fig. 9: Devonshire van 25. Ludwig Mies der Rohe, Prospectus of the Union of German Plate Glass Collection, Chatsworth (reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement 2 Manufacturers, 1933; in Tegethoff (1985), p. 67. Trustees). O

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