Episode notes
The German Pavilion, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich for the 1929 Barcelona World Exposition, has two pools. In one stands Georg Kolbe's sculpture Dawn. The other was long interpreted as a flat mirror of water - thus fitting perfectly with the perception of the pavilion as a composition of abstract, intersecting surfaces. However, it originally housed water plants, which were omitted during the building's reconstruction in the 1980s.
In 2022, the CENTRALA group and curator Aleksandra Kędziorek, in collaboration with the Mies van der Rohe Foundation team and experts from the Tres Turons aquatic plant nursery, began the process of re-introducing water lilies to the pavilion. After two years, the biologically dead pool has turned into a living ecosystem, and birds, frogs and dragonflies have become regular visitor ...