Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich designed the German pavilion for Barcelona’s 1929 exposition. The original was dismantled in 1930; the building you visit opened in 1986 as a reconstruction on the same site. Glass, stone and water make movement and reflection the main attractions.
It beats Santa Maria del Mar for showing an entirely different idea of space, but Casa Vicens offers richer domestic detail for a newcomer. Modernist specialists can put it much higher. Walk around the walls and pool, not furnished rooms; the architecture itself is the exhibit.
Sources: Pavilion history.
Photo: Russ McGinn · CC BY-SA 2.5. Resized/compressed; same license.
