[concept]

[animation 18x faster]

A historical photograph of the Barcelona Pavilion is set as the point of departure. The Pavilion, which became the icon of Modernism, was designed by Mies van der Rohe as the German Pavilion for the World Fair in 1929 and was dismantled after 6 month. The initial significance of the Pavilion to represent Germany to the World fair expanded into mystifications of the stone and glass surfaces of the structure which is now considered Mies van der Rohe's most significant piece of architecture, as it displays and develops the "elements of Modernism in the purest form." From 1930 to 1986, the pavilion existed only on a few Black and White photographs, but its presence as the Modernist icon did not cease.

By projecting a still image from 1929, temporality lies not only in the history of the building, but also in the image itself. The Blur Wall Prototype superimposes a third layer of temporality by changing the appearance of the image on the projection surface and that one is steam. At one moment in time, the image will travel through the vertical glass units and disappear in the masonry walls of the Anchorage. Then areas will reflect on steam-filled units. When the steam condenses and the water returns to the source. The glass will clear again, while another vertical element will pick up renderring the image. 

Physical yet ephemeral, slowly, maybe after the second or third encounter of the viewer with the travelling image patterns projected onto steam, a collection of memories from 1929 will recompose into an image of the most reproduced photography of Modern architecture from the XX Century. 
The sounds of the boiling and steaming water, the clicking of the slide projector and the dripping after condensation are amplified in unexpected locations, to again irritate the viewer and heighten the sensitivity to physical and temporal phenomena.
The only thing that seems to change are the steel plates covering the open ends of the vertical elements. As they develop rust over the time span of the exhibition, the temporality of the installation articulating the evaporation of time is exposed.

By distancing, blurring and collapsing different layers of time and temporality, the transparent installation and the vaulted space develop multiple relationships. The permanent humidity of the brick walls is reflected in the water basin and refracted in the steam, establishing references while in technical terms the conditions remain incompatible (distilled water in steam units/ still shallow water surface/ moisture as part of the Anchorage's bio-organisms in the walls).
 

48 U-glass profiles, height 5m, width 45 cm, assempled in a double vertical layer of glass
12 base units, each with immersed heater, timer, mechanism to keep water level and supply pipe for water
condensation steel or metal plate to be placed on top of glass profiles
slide or other still image projector, wide angle
shallow reflection pool to match the width of the prototype, sides of the pool to match the height base units
water tank of larger capacity with distributing system of water pipes
sound system, amplyfier and 3 microphones
use of distilled water recommended.
 

sequence: 24 minutes or average time spent to pass through whole exhibition
 

[animation 18x faster]

VERSION WITH DRY ICE/SMOKE MACHINE TO BE RELEASED

TOWARDS THE MYTH...

The German Pavilion on the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona belongs to those buildings of the heroic period of architectural modernism which caught the greatest attention and about which it was most frequently written. It is probably the most poetic work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in which he achieved a synthesis of his previous work and established some of the most important elements that would become the basis for his later oeuvre. Immediately after the opening of the Pavilion in June 1929, the articles about it started appearing both in popular and specialized periodicals. That was the beginning of an extensive bibliography that is still being enlarged. The wide scope of interest for the Pavilion shown by the critics and the historians of architecture can be clearly seen from the fact that the Spanish theorist Juan Pablo Bonta even tried to formulate the laws of development of architectural critics on the basis of articles written about the Pavilion. [1] 

This large interest stands in a sharp contrast with the Pavilion's short physical existence. The structure was dismantled immediately upon closing of the Exhibition at the beginning of 1930, after several unsuccessful attempts of the German Government to sell it to someone who would keep it in permanent possession. Material of some value was taken back to Germany and this is where its trace is lost. As it is also often the case with people, such a "premature death" of the building was a crucial moment for creation of its myth. This is how the paradox arose-the largest number of those who wrote about the Pavilion had never actually seen it in reality. The image of the Pavilion was formed during several decades based only on one original plan by Mies and on a series of black-and-white photographs, taken from carefully chosen angles, just like the master used to do with most of his works.[2] 

The myth of the "Mies's Pavilion" grew with every new text about it, usually full of admiration. It could be said that the number of different interpretations also grew with it. These interpretations were often controversial and they reached such a level of sophistication that their correctness became totally untestable. When after Franco's death Spain opened up, the energy invested in the myth of the Pavilion could finally reach its physical manifestation. Fundacio Mies van der Rohe was established in 1983 [3], with the primary aim to rebuild the Pavilion, which happened three years later. This is how the myth was materialized-something that existed for decades only as a virtual image resurrected back to the concrete physical form. 

... AND BEYOND

In their awarded design for the building of Fundacio Mies van der Rohe, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss and Sabine von Fischer act contrary to the Jury's suggestions for a subtle "underground" intervention. Instead of designing the "invisible" building in the surroundings of one of the most famous pieces of modern architecture, they reversed the task and redesigned the surroundings, which include the new structure. The Foundation building is placed parallel to the Pavilion, in its background and the unarticulated front square is closed and transformed into a large pool. The key elements are walls made of water-filled glass lenses enclosing the whole complex. The front facade of the Foundation building has the same finish. 

The authors took the opportunity of the competition to put the replica of the Pavilion into the context of cultural and physical conditions that are significantly changed in comparison to the original ones. At the same time, this was also an opportunity to put the replica into the context of its own nature-a copy, almost perfect one, but still not authentic. By enclosing the Pavilion with glass walls filled with water, the architects blur the view to it and thus reverse the process through which the virtual myth was materialized. The "hyper-realism" of the copy gains back the sixty-years-long mythical sediments by the blurred perspective, which calls in mind thousand times reproduced original black-and-white photographs, the only medium of the Pavilion's existence for several decades. Blur plays another important role: it is a kind of metaphoric emancipation from the burdening "sharpness" of critics' interpretations that go far beyond provable. This is how the attitude towards the Pavilion becomes almost naive, "free from interpretation and free from 'knowledge'" (SJW). 

Contrary to the general opinion that the Modern and especially Mies's architecture is anti-contextual, attributed by some critics to the Barcelona Pavilion as well, Wolf Tegethoft [3] shows quite convincingly how the project of the Pavilion resulted from the overall plan of the Exhibition. Seventy years later, the surviving buildings built for the exhibition have melted into the diffuse structure of the city and the original axes have disappeared. This diminished the originally outstanding position of Mies's work, the position that was chosen by the author himself. The "Spanish village" in the background, one of the greatest attractions of the Exhibition, disappeared as well, and the Pavilion lost the role of a passage to it. Thus it became an aim itself and its labyrinthine interior was deprived of its sense. Placing the Foundation building behind the Pavilion, Von Fischer/Jovanovic regain the reason for the motion through the structure, avoiding the "dead end" effect. Enclosing the complex with walls, the Pavilion is separated from the city, which led its own, "real" life for sixty years, and is placed into a self-sufficient non-temporal mythical space to which it naturally belongs. The large water mirror dominates the space and enhances the illusionism and remoteness of the building. 

From the formal point of view, the design derives from Mies's own vocabulary. This vocabulary e is very simple itself and consists of a disciplined De Stijl play of horizontal and vertical planes. "Blur" reduces its expression even more: there is no play any more, what is left are just two semi-transparent walls and two water surfaces. Placing the Pavilion into a frame the expressive attributes of which are reduced to almost nothing emphasizes certain inherent level of complexity of the original structure. This is a simple but clever decision, because any kind of intervention with stronger formal properties, even under the ground, would compete with the delicate minimalism of the Pavilion. 

The new building of the Foundation, the competition's main task, also represents a subtle transformation of Mies's formal approach. The long low rectangular volume houses boxes of the library and offices that freely "hover" in the empty space, representing a three-dimensional equivalent of Mies's wall planes. Thus volumes with functional content articulate the flowing space of the Foundation building, instead by full walls, but still in a similar way as the Pavilion itself. 

Architecture of the Pavilion oscillates between materialism and illusionism.[5] This relation, also present in other Mies's works, got its richest expression here. The authors rely on this when they say: Walking along the solid walls of travertine (to look at), along the transparent walls of glass (to look through), along the illusionary surface of the Onyx stone (to imagine the infinite landscape), along the three existing surfaces that have already pulled the viewer's focus to the infinite, there appears the fourth surface: the mystifying effect of water lenses, a constructed wall of water filled transparencies. By this blur, the well-known photographic images of the pavilion are evoked in transformation, sign the ability of thick transparent surfaces to desaturate and diffuse one's sight. The view through the blur is about the sequence of a thousand new views of the pavilion, by-passing the need to focus on the rebuilt edges of the existing pavilion on the site. 

"Water wall" sums up the essence of the Pavilion. Its complex technology and the use of different reflecting and transparent surfaces,[6] add another effect to Mies's illusionist repertoire-an effect with a precisely defined purpose. Providing that it is both a tangible technological solution and a means for transformation of perception, the water-wall represents a "device for creation of illusions" which interprets the duality of Mies's designing procedure from the perspective of the 90's. 

"Blur" is a precise comment of modern perception of one of the key monuments of modern culture. This consciousness of the context puts it clearly among the Post-modernist discourses. However, ultimately reduced expressiveness singles the project out of all current formally oriented movements, while its cultural engagement separates it from the self-referentiality of minimalism. Perhaps what is the most interesting feature of "Blur" is a self-conscious combination of "pragmatic and unreal", as the competition Jury remarked, a combination of poetic potential that perfectly matches that of Mies at his best. 

NOTES
[1] Juan Pablo Bonta, Architecture and its Interpretation; A Study of Expressive Systems in Architecture, London, 1979
[2] A very good review of sources on the Pavilion can be found in Wolf Tegethoff: Mies van der Rohe: The Villas and Country Houses, New York, pp. 70-89.
[3] Although functioning of the Pavilion is still one of the Foundation's main concerns it is also dealing with research and promotion of the works of Mies van der Rohe and modern architecture in general, as well as with fostering of the culture of exchange in the sphere of architecture. More detailed data on its works can be found on the address: www.miesbcn.com.
[4] Wolf Tegethoff: Mies van der Rohe: The Villas and Country Houses
[5] Many critics wrote on the effects of materialism and illusionism in the Pavilion in Barcelona. Kenneth Frampton gives a good accounts of : Studies in Tectonic Culture, The MIT Press, Cambridge/London, pp. 175-178. A review of bibliography related to this problem is also given.
[6] It is interesting that the original wealth of various effects of transparency and reflection of glass in several colours - white, dark grey, green and milky - is not authentically reproduced on the replica of the Pavilion. 
 

Vladimir Kulic is an architecture historian [University of Texas, Austin] and regular contributor to Cabinet Magazine [New York City]
 
 

Normal Group for Architecture was founded in 1998 by Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss and Sabine von Fischer after they won second prize in the competition for the Foundation Mies van der Rohe in Barcelona (BLUR - 2G International Competition). Commissioned by Thread Waxing Space, a non-profit art organization from New York, to design and oversee the execution of their new offices, Normal Group opened its office and since then works on design projects in various fields of architecture.
 

Projects by Normal Group include Rubber-Bar, coffee-bar and info-desk in Swiss Institute New York (to be built until the end of 2001), Kollektiv, competition for a school in Liechtenstein (2nd stage, 2000), Blur, 2G International Competition for Mies van der Rohe Foundation (2nd Prize), Stage, TKTS Competition (New York, 1999), Thread Waxing Space, non-profit art organization in New York (completed 1999), Hotel Normal, Open Competition for a hotel in Belgrade, (Honourable Mention, 1998) and others.

contact: Sabine v. Fischer + Srdjan Jovanovic Vajs, Normal Group, 147 Essex Street, New York, NY 10002
telephone: +41 43 2339665 (Sabine v. Fischer) , or +1 646 4861243 (Srdjan Jovanovic Vajs)
email: blur@diaphanarch.net (Sabine v. Fischer) , or blur@thenao.net (Srdjan Jovanovic Vajs)