PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society

This installation aims to unravel the myth of Mies van der Rohe as a solitary genius. Fundació Mies commissioned Andrés Jaque in 2012 to create a site-specific intervention in Mies’s most famous building, the Barcelona Pavilion. The original Pavilion of 1929 was reconstructed in 1986 with the fundamental addition of a basement. Jaque’s installation focused on this lower level, which was an overlooked yet significant part of the building, introducing new questions for contemporary scholarship about Mies. The intervention exposes—like the phantom of the Pavilion’s past—the building’s hidden context: the networks of people, technologies, and institutions that made it possible. PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society consists of all the objects and materials found in the basement that have contributed to rebuilding and maintaining Mies’s iconic building and reputation.