Barcelona Pavilion Study Drawings and an Interview by Paul Rudolph

INTERVIEW IN ENGLISH (Entrevista en español más abajo) “Peter Blake: And when architects try to organize it or give it some kind of form, they seem to ruin it. Paul Rudolph: We have certain limitations as architects. That is part of what I mean by “spirit”. It is the corrective factor of human intelligence, in all fields. PB: So there we have it: site, scale, structure, function, and spirit. Have you noticed every time you talk about one of those things, you seem to touch upon or refer to Mies's Barcelona Pavilion in one way or another? Why is that? PR: To me, the Barcelona Pavilion is Mies' greatest building. It is one of the most human buildings I can think of -a rarity in the twentieth century. It is really fascinating to me to see the tentative nature of the Barcelona Pavilion. I am glad that Mies really wasn't able to make up his mind about a lot of things – alignments in the marble panels, or the mullions, or the joints in the paving. Nothing quite lines up, all for very good reasons. It really humanizes the building. PB: My guess is if he had had a chance to redesign it about twenty years later, he might have messed it up – made it too regular, aligned everything… PR: Possibly. The courtyards and the interior space cast a spell on you which you will remember forever. PB: If you were to put your finger on it, what do you think you learned from the Barcelona Pavilion? PR: I made a few sketches that are meant to illustrate the impact of the actual building (as rebuilt in 1992 on the same site as the original 1929 Pavilion), which is very different from drawings, photos, etc. The Barcelona Pavilion is religious in its nature and is primarily a spatial experience. We have no accepted way of indicating space, and therefore the sketches made are very inadequate. One is drawn by the sequence of space through it.