Mies Missing Materiality

Mies Missing Materiality is a project by the architects Anna and Eugeni Bach dressing the Mies Van der Rohe Pavilion to strip it of its materiality. This simple act turns the Pavilion into a representation of itself that opens the door to multiple interpretations about aspects like the value of the original, the role of the white surface as an image of modernity and the importance of materiality in the perception of the space. This video explains the three phases of the intervention, focusing on the different readings of the space generated by each one. A first stage of assembly where we pass from a look that escapes through the depth generated by the reflections, transparencies and textures, to increasingly white, uniform and opaque surfaces. In a second stage, with the intervention already completed, the perception of the space becomes almost liquid, the whiteness surrounds the spectator and the scenes pass more slowly, more smoothly, as in a kind of dream. Finally, the violence of the dismantling contrasts with the previous scenes. The sheets on the walls and the ground are tear off, to retrieve the original appearance of the Pavilion. This project just received the FAD award for Ephemeral Interventions 2019.