In the 2G competition project for the extension to Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona pavilion, the problem of distance to the pavilion was primary. Second came the question of materiality...

How could one possibly come near and confront or juxtapose this pavilion which, in the eyes of historians and architects, had become the epitome of Modernism?

The competition brief offered the options to make remote, underground or virtual projects. Yet we chose to come closer, to be near the reconstructed icon. We created a volume set into the slope behind it, where Mies had left a path which led to other sites at the World Exhibition in 1929. We chose to come very close – yet without constructing another monument, but to blur any notion of distance through a seemingly ephemeral presence. We chose to come very close – yet without constructing another monument, but to blur any notion of distance through a seemingly ephemeral presence.

The material, then added to the trinity of travertine, onyx and glass, should be water lenses, illuminated to create a deep façade, a visual blur which would challenge the clear formal image of the pavilion. Walking along the solid walls of travertine (to look at), along the transparent walls of glass (to look through), along the illusionary surface of the Onyx stone (to conjure upon infinite landscape), there appears the fourth material: a constructed wall of water-filled transparencies with the mystifying effect of water lenses.

With this blur, the well-known photographic images of the pavilion are evoked in transformation, through the ability of the thick transparent surfaces to deplete and diffuse one's sight. By introducing ambiguous surfaces, the scheme mediates between the familiar reproductions of the original from 1929 (which was in place for only six months) and the actual presence of the real, rebuilt pavilion from 1986. The view through the blur is the sequence of a thousand new views, bypassing the focus on the rebuilt edges of the existing pavilion - this most ambivalent space of Modernism.

The project "Blur" was awarded the Second Prize in the 2G Competition for the extension of the Barcelona Pavilion.

Project credits: Normal Group for Architecture, Sabine von Fischer & Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, 1998