Less is More

Guarding the barcelona pavilion was a huge bald man resembling a fat bulldog. He charged 7 euros for admission and told me he didn’t know how long the bus would take to the airport even though I asked politely. This is the house that heralded modern space. The pamphlet read “Built from glass, steel and different kinds of marble, the Pavilion was conceived to accommodate the official reception presided over by King Alfonso XIII of Spain along with the German authorities. After the closure of the Exhibition, the Pavilion was disassembled in 1930 but then reassembled in 1986 due to its significance.” Contrasted to stuffy Victorian houses, this pavilion must have looked revolutionary when first introduced in 1929. Mies configured planes of stone to divide space and yet masterfully let the spaces flow. With the possibilities of modern materials, structural columns were liberated  from walls.... free floating in space with polished mirror metallic finishes, they dematerialized. By reducing the palette of materials to glass, steel and four species  of stone (Roman travertine, green Alpine marble, ancient green marble from Greece and golden onyx from the Atlas Mountains), mies created a zen like atmosphere. 

I started to pay attention to the way the shadows of trees changed along the back wall by George kolbe’s statue, or how the walls didn’t  line up with floor joints to appear to be floating in space, or how parallel walls heightened one’s attention to the perspective of the statue, or how large stones were used in one shallow pool while black tile was used in the other. Visiting this pavilion I could see how Murcutt’s two main influences: Thoreau (“simplicity simplicity simplicity”) and Mies (“less is more”) were so kindred in spirit. Weary from a day of architecture sightseeing, I rested in a Barcelona chair especially made for the Pavilion which consisted of a leather upholstery spanning between a modern metallic tube profile whose shape was derived from the ancient golden rectangle. 

My peace was broken when out of the corner of my eye I caught glimpses of architects taking pictures. In barcelona, I saw a lot of architects. To the untrained eye, they may just look like tourists... but I can spot an architect a mile away. A serious architect goes to a site with a black SLR camera... A very serious architect attaches a telephoto zoom to his SLR camera body. A douchebag architect like me with nothing better to do with his last hour in Barcelona sits in a Barcelona chair and notices these picture taking architects and hatches an idea to start taking pictures of them to write about them.  I got out of my chair and tracked  the architects down. One by one, I first annoyed them by photobombing their serious pictures with my awkward presence. I haven’t shaven now for 2 weeks, nor have i combed my hair for 2 days, and my 3 jacket hooded outfit is getting unkempt with various chicken shawarma sauce stains.  I stood aside and pretended to take a picture of something else so the architects didn’t  become self conscious. They used their telephoto lenses to document such minutiae as joint patterns, wall alignments, material reflections and so on. Within walking a loop around the pavilion I photographed half a dozen archinerds in their habitat. To provide more humor, I also make a half dozen selfies in reflective stainless steel columns and glass, and portraits of the fat guard and a dog someone has chained up while they visit the pavilion. With all my observational powers, I noticed how I could’ve snuck into the pavilion without paying. I felt mies would’ve chuckled at my photos and meandering ideas within his simple austere pavilion.