The Barcelona Pavilion. A shared story
This year is special. It commemorates the 50th anniversary of the architect Mies Van der Rohe, and celebrates the 90th anniversary of the Barcelona Pavilion, a work whose authorship he shares with the architect and designer Lilly Reich. Therefore, in this edition we will commemorate these events with history this building, modern icon and symbol of the revaluation of women in the history of architecture.
If "the story with capital H is a male territory", that of architecture, and in particular, the episode comprising the study of the Modern Movement, was, until now, a forbidden site. The recognition of the work of the pioneering architects of that period, is the result of a struggle for historical visibility, inherited from the different waves of feminism and whose bases were taken up by the interdisciplinary field of gender studies. This need for recognition of women and their contributions over time has led several researchers to carry out a review of those episodes they gave for immovable. This is the case of the Barcelona Pavilion, whose authorship Mies Van der Rohe and Lilly Reich share. So let's start by knowing the feminine side of this story.
Lilly Reich, despite not having studied architecture, performed works from other artistic disciplines strictly linked to it. She began her career in Vienna studying fashion, as a pupil of architects Hermann Muthesius and Peter Behrens. He then continued his instruction with the architect Josef Hoffmann, who ran the Wiener Werkstatte, a workshop that produced objects based on designs by avant-garde artists, so at first he decided to dedicate himself to furniture design. However, he began to have commissions related to interior design, for example, the exhibition in a shop window of a pharmacy in Elefanten-Aotheke, Berlin in 1912.
Between 1914 and 1924 he worked in his own studio, dedicated to carrying out projects covering interior design, decorative arts and fashion. Her hard work gave her special recognition: to be the first woman elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the Deutcher Werkbund in 1920.
However, his most fruitful professional period was at the side of the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, with whom he partnered in 1927. Together they held several exhibitions including: "From fiber to fabric" – the couple's cover letter at the professional level; "Weissenhof Modern Housing Residential Colony" in Stuttgart, where they showed industrial products, glass, fabrics and other bauhaus textile designs; and the "German Glass and Works Room" for the Association of German Glass Manufacturers in Cologne.
In 1929, due to the successes obtained in the previous exhibitions, Reich and Mies van der Rohe were appointed artistic directors of the German section of the World Exhibition in Barcelona. In addition, they were commissioned a pavilion to house the official reception at the inauguration presided over by King Alfonso XIII together with the German authorities. The result was the icon we know today, where the famous Barcelona chair was exhibited for the first time, one of the most important pieces of furniture of the last century.
According to Albert Pfeiffer, Knoll's Vice President of Design and Management—the company that manufactured the chair and has owned the rights to produce and sell furniture attributed to Mies van der Rohe since 1953—"is becoming more than a coincidence than the Mies' involvement and success in exhibition design begins at the same time as his personal relationship with Reich. It is interesting to note that Mies did not develop any modern furniture successfully before or after his collaboration with Reich." According to the researchers and experts in the field, Cristian Cirici, Fernando Ramos and Ignasi de Sol-Morales, the figure of Lilly Reich. "It was the great forgotten one, phagocted by Mies."
In view of this, it should be mentioned that the collaboration of both architects, as is commonly the case in design offices, was very close and for this reason, it is always difficult to draw the boundaries of their authorships. However, Reich's role as co-creator of the Pavilion, and other works by the duo, such as the Tugendhat House of 1929 and the Lange House of 1930, began to be recognized.
This shared story has an unexpected ending. The rise of Nazism in Germany forced Mies to emigrate to the United States in 1937. There, he was appointed director of the School of Architecture of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. A year later, in September 1939, Lilly visited Mies in the US for a couple of weeks, perhaps intending to stay with him. However, his interest was unrequited, so he returned to Germany in the worst moments of World War II. They were never seen again, and yet she took care of Mies' personal archive, which consisted of more than 4000 drawings, and protected him from bombardment by hiding him on a farm outside Berlin.
It can be said then that thanks to Lilly we own part of Mies' legacy. Perhaps for this reason, in retribution, the Mies van der Rohe Foundation offers the Lilly Reich Grant for Equality in Architecture whose objective is to support "the study, dissemination and visibility of contributions in architecture that have been unduly relega[…]ted or encourage access on equal opportunities to the exercise of architecture."