When directors Xavi Campreciós and Pep Martín started investigating the Barcelona Pavilion by Ludwieg Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich for a documentary they intended to shoot about it, they found themselves in front of a question: how come that a building that had only existed for a few months, was mainly known through drawings and black and white photographs, and was only recreated in 1984, had become an inspiration, a reference and an obsession for many artists, architects and designers?
The two directors found the answers while shooting their documentary "Mies On Scene. Barcelona in Two Acts: the mithography surrounding the 1929 building was woven around its tranquil forms in space, those physical elements such as columns, terrace, free-standing walls that enclosed the pavilion, forming a pattern of open and closed spaces. Besides, the textures of the noble materials employed, the colours of the travertines, marbles and onyx, and the clean and simple lines characterising the structure, turned it into an iconic and essentially modernist building with a touch of neoclassicism.
The story of the pavilion is told in the documentary through a series of interviews with architects, writers and curators who were deeply influenced by the structure, and who create around it an architectural tale of memories and interpretation. The pavilion was a radical response to the original commission, it was a serene and blissful example of spatial abstraction and it could be interpreted as a perfect European combination, it is indeed a Germany pavilion, it was built in Barcelona but influenced international architects.
"Mies on Scene" was recently screened during the Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF) in New York (and you can read a more in-depth review of the documentary here).
What fascinated you so much about Ludwieg Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion that you felt you had to shoot a documentary about it?
Xavi Campreciós and Pep Martín: This documentary is born under the collaboration of Nihao Films and the Mies van der Rohe Foundation. We have been filming in the Pavilion for nearly 10 years in different occasions for the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, following artistic interventions and official events, and at some point we had the idea of coproducing a documentary about architecture, so we started thinking about possible topics and approaches. In the end we ended up with the most obvious one: to explain why this small and, for the most part of the population of Barcelona, unknown building, is one of the greatest works in the history of architecture.
The documentary has got something poetical about it, with very soothing intervals between one interview and the other in which the camera lingers on the walls, the textures of the materials or the linearity of the design: did you opt for this narrative rhythm to try and recreate in the documentary the emotions a visitor may feel while walking around the pavilion?
Xavi Campreciós and Pep Martín: Absolutely. To simplify a bit, when we film architecture we need two kinds of shots: first we need the "must have" shots, the descriptive ones, to relate the work with its surroundings, explain the spatial relations between the different parts of the building, show the constructive details and so on These shots need to be clear and contextualized, of course we want them to be nice and well composed, but their mission is to explain. But then there are those shots in which you as a filmmaker use both your language and the architectural language to create sensations, to pass on the feelings that the work is transmitting to you. These are the ones that we enjoy the most, and the Pavilion is incredibly powerful in giving you new perspectives, reflections and abstract compositions. They are almost infinite because as the building is wide open, it changes every time according to the lighting conditions, the season of the year or the visitors attitude. We decided not to use camera movements and use a rather slow editing because that is the language we feel suits the Pavilion's serenity and austerity. Besides, we wanted to give enough time to those who are seeing the Pavilion for the first time to explore it.
While researching for your film, did you discover anything unexpected or surprising about the Pavilion?
Xavi Campreciós and Pep Martín: We discovered that there are people who don't like the building! That surprised us because we took for granted that there could not be anyone who didn't like it, that the Pavilion was just beautiful. That was a fact for us.
In the film you give space to Mies van der Rohe's co-designer, Lilly Reich: some of the architects interviewed in the documentary feel Mies van der Rohe didn't acknowledge her as much as he should have done, do you feel her input was limited to or actually extended beyond the interior design?
Xavi Campreciós and Pep Martín: As German architect Fritz Neumeyer points out in the film, there are no reliable evidences about the contribution of Lilly Reich. That said, all of the interviewed people say that they believe she had a huge contribution, she was a great interior designer and the way Mies divided space and used colors might have been influenced by her. If you imagine Mies and Lilly Reich as a couple, both being commisioned to do the Pavilion, you can also easily imagine them creating it together. From this perspective it looks quite obvious that the Pavilion wouldn't be the same without the contribution of Lilly Reich. We can not possibly know which part is whose, but it was a co-creation and to us seems almost impossible to think that Lilly only did the Barcelona Chair and the curtain.
Did your perspective on Ludwieg Mies van der Rohe, the man and the architect, change after finishing your documentary?
Xavi Campreciós and Pep Martín: More than a change of perspective, we got to know him better. Although in the documentary we didn't go deep inside his character, we just introduced the bit of necessary context to understand one of his works. We are not architects and we didn't know why he and the Pavilion were so important in the architecture history. The process of filming and editing was amazing because we finally found the reason behind that question. As someone said, information increases the capacity of things to produce pleasure. And that's exactly what happened, after all these interviews with all those experts explaining it with so much passion, we like the Pavilion much more than when we started to film it, and we look at it with different eyes.
Which is your favourite building by Ludwieg Mies van der Rohe and why?
Xavi Campreciós and Pep Martín: Honestly, we couldn't say. Probably Mies' architecture needs to be explained, at least nowadays, to be appreciated by people who don't know much about architecture. For example in New York we had the opportunity to visit the Seagram Building with the architects from the Mies van der Rohe Foundation that were taking care of the architectural content of the documentary, Ivan Blasi and Anna Sala, and when they explained us what they liked about the Seagram Building we said "oh yes, that's true!". But those were details that we as non-architects didn't pay attention to. We love the aesthetics of the Farnsworth house for example, but at the same time we wouldn't live there because of its coldness. The same thing could be said about the Pavilion, it is so beautiful but too cold to live in. We couldn't say which is our favourite, but all Mies' buildings we know are great locations in terms of cinema. The Neue Nationalgalerie would definitely be at the top of the list.
What has been the reaction of the audience to this documentary so far?
Xavi Campreciós and Pep Martín: We received a very positive feedback both from architects and non-architects. All of them praise the beauty of the shots - this is a shared merit with Mies van der Rohe, Lilly Reich and us - but we especially value the positive comments about the content and the narrative of the documentary. Our aim was to produce a documentary that could interest both architects and non-architects and the feedback we received showed us that we succeded in that. Non-architects feel that they learn a lot about architecture in a pleasant and not boring way, and architects are delighted with the interventions of the people we interviewed. This is definetely one of the strongest aspects of the documentary, and the people we interviewed - among the others architect Fritz Neumeyer, writer Eduardo Mendoza and philosopher Xavier Rubert de Ventós - provided us with some beautiful quotes and were really passionate when they shared their opinions with us.
What are your future plans? Are you planning to do any new architecture documentary?
Xavi Campreciós and Pep Martín: We are currently shooting a documentary about the last 60 years of Spanish architecture and design which we hope to release at the beginning of 2019. After so many years filming architecture, we still feel attracted by it. We think there are so many interesting topics you could do a documentary about, so we hope we can continue shooting in this direction, and find people and organizations willing to invest in our projects as well.
Images in this post from "Mies On Scene. Barcelona in two acts" © Fundació Mies van der Rohe and courtesy of Xavi Campreciós and Pep Martín.
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