Elegant Serenity

Spending only a few days in Spain, one of the many highlights was the opportunity to see and experience the Barcelona Pavilion, designed by Mies van der Rohe. Interacting with the space helped give me the necessary understanding of interwoven and overlapping spaces, essential for good spatial planning. The steel columns and freely spaced planes allow for subtle suggestions of boundary, blurring the lines between path, transition and place. Chosen materials and textures, especially evident in Mies' use of water, create illusions of inside and outside space. Purely modern in form and simply interactive sculpture in function, the Barcelona Pavilion is a tranquil surprise in the context of such an urban vicinity.