Mies van der Rohe Pavilion Archives - Architecture Walks and Tours in Barcelona

Rethinking the City: SCALAE and the Mies van der Rohe Foundation on Barcelona’s Capital of Architecture

Posted on October 27, 2026 by cm

On Faces and Urban Fragments – Scalae

Barcelona is a city constantly defined by its layers, where historic urban experiments seamlessly meet contemporary regeneration. This October, as the city embraces its role as the World Capital of Architecture, the conversation turns inward to examine what this international spotlight genuinely means for the urban fabric and the communities that inhabit it.

On Thursday, October 29, the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion hosts a special edition of the debate series «A propòsit de…», co-organized with SCALAE and curated by Anna Ramos and Félix Arranz. Rather than simply celebrating milestones, the panel gathers architects, scholars, and cultural voices to critically analyze the ongoing models, strategies, and tensions driving Barcelona’s urban regeneration today.

The discussion centers on the dialogue between physical transformation and social responsibility: How do global designations shape public space, neighborhood heritage, and local habitability? Can architectural interventions keep pace with pressing social, environmental, and symbolic needs? By bridging academic insight with practical city-making, the talk aims to cut through institutional rhetoric and foster an open, ground-level perspective on where our urban landscape is heading.

For those of us dedicated to exploring Barcelona street by street, understanding the ideas behind the stone, steel, and urban layout is essential. Great architecture does not exist in a vacuum; it thrives on debate, critique, and collective memory.

Date & Time: Thursday, October 29, 2026 | 19:00 – 21:00
Venue: Mies van der Rohe Pavilion (Av. Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 7, Montjuïc)
Curated by: Anna Ramos & Félix Arranz (Fundació Mies van der Rohe & SCALAE)
Access: Open debate (more details and updates available via the Fundació Mies van der Rohe calendar)

Mass is More

Posted on October 4, 2022 by cm

IAAC presents Mass is More at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion

Mass is More is the installation designed by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and Bauhaus Earth that brings the innovation of mass timber construction to the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona. The project, open to visit from 1st to 9th of October 2022, establishes a dialogue between the industrial modernity of the 20th century and the new low-emission buildings of the 21st century.

The event serves as a stage for the launch of MASS MADERA, a national network of pioneers whose main mission is to facilitate and promote the construction of green buildings, and work towards the decarbonization of architecture. Through various interventions, the installation shows how the use of wood and other regenerative materials can help reduce the high CO2 emissions that are associated with the construction industry.

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The project has been made possible through grant funding from Built by Nature (BbN), a philanthropic fund dedicated to accelerating the timber building transformation in Europe by radically reducing embodied carbon; safely storing carbon in our buildings for generations; and sequestering carbon by championing forest stewardship and regeneration. Laudes Foundation is the founding partner of Built by Nature.

“Mass is More” will also host the launch of MASS MADERA, a network of Spanish pioneers in industrialized solid wood construction, including cities, governments, companies, organizations and architects from around the country. This network is being coordinated by IAAC, whose main objective is to promote the development of mass timber construction, and the reduction of CO2 emissions associated with it.

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The “Mass is More” installation transforms the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion.

Almost a century after the construction of the German Pavilion designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, IAAC and Bauhaus Earth propose to create a dialogue between the past and the future of wood and an exhibition that explores the use of biogenic materials for architecture. The pavilion is also the host of the biennial European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture / Mies van der Rohe Awards, attesting to the role and influence of the Fundació Mies van der Rohe in the current architectural discourse.

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Adhering to the architectural language of the pavilion, this new installation creates a dialogue between the most advanced materials of the 20th century and the 21st century. Through a series of elements made of cross laminated timber (CLT) panels from local forests, this installation demonstrates the structural capabilities of this new materiality and its suitability for constructing more sustainable buildings with a much lower environmental impact. All the pieces that make up this installation have been produced by Xilonor, the most advanced Galician CLT company in Spain, part of the FINSA group.

Cinema at Mies van der Rohe Pavilion

Posted on July 29, 2021 by cm

‘Pantalla Pavelló’ is the film series directly projected on the travertine of the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion that delves into the relationship between the built environment, its limits and its borders, the people who inhabit it, and how this relationship is accentuated and revealed in its maximum expression. Architecture, and our cities along with it, determines and influences how we live in the same way as our rules of coexistence and the laws that govern our societies. A reflection on the built environment around us, the cities we want and therefore the society we desire.

Since summer 2016, Fundació Mies van der Rohe explores this relationship with its film series “Pantalla Pavelló”: a tour through various cities and their cinematographic depiction by projecting different films on the Pavilion’s travertine.

2021: Relations between built spaces and social structures. “España vacía, España llena. Strategies for Conciliation”

This edition of the Pantalla Pavelló summer film series, which brings us cinema and debate on architecture with films projected directly on the travertine of the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, complements the XV Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (BEAU).
By the same curators, Anna Bach, Eugeni Bach and Óscar Miguel Ares, the cycle focuses on the theme of the BEAU ” España vacía, España llena. Strategies for conciliation”.
The programme includes three films that open up the debate on depopulation and overcrowding in a context of diversity of life choices that have been rethought because of the current pandemic situation:

12-07-21 Tierras construidas, Arturo Dueñas (Spain, 2019, 81’)
02-08-21 En construcción, José Luis Guerin (Spain, 2000, 125’)
06-09-21 El cielo gira, Mercedes Álvarez (Spain, 2004, 105′)

The incredible disappearing Mies van der Rohe Pavilion: Mies missing materiality

Posted on November 8, 2017 by cm

”Mies missing materiality”, an installation by Anna & Eugeni Bach in the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion.

Artists Anna and Eugeni Bach will carry out a creative intervention on the pavilion consisting of dressing it and then undressing it of all its materiality under the tittle “Mies missing materiality”.

The Mies van der Rohe Pavilion is a fantastic work of art. Walking around its facilities is always a rewarding experience, since its architectural conception offers us different sensations of space, colour, light, comfort and amplitude. As a construction, the Pavilion is of enormous interest, but it can also be understood as a blank page, a structure that allows us to conceive of new functions, new appearances and new languages.

Every year, different international artists pass through the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion with a mission: to carry out a creative intervention on the structure that lends it a new physical and intellectual presence. November sees Anna and Eugeni Bach’s intervention called ‘Mies Missing Materiality’.

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In the words of the artists, “The Mies van der Rohe Pavilion will be dressed to undress it of all its materiality. The Pavilion will, for a time, be the scale model 1:1 of the longest temporary pavilion of modern architecture”. After the work is unveiled – a process that will last for a week – we can visit it for another ten days, before the artists proceeed with its rematerialization, which means disassembling its new physical appearance so that the Pavilion can return to the its initial form. The first phase of the intervention is scheduled to take place from 8 to 15 November and it can be visited from 16 to 27 November. On 28 November the pavilion will go back to its original form.
If you want to find out more about this artistic intervention, you’ll find additional information at the following link.