The 1929 Barcelona International Exposition

Barcelona hosted the 1929 International Exposition on the slopes of Montjuïc, an event whose architecture is remembered today less for the fair's many since-demolished national pavilions than for one small building constructed as the official German national pavilion: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, a low, flat-roofed structure of free-standing marble and travertine planes, chrome-clad columns and glass walls with almost no enclosed interior space, exhibiting little beyond its own materials and Georg Kolbe's sculpture Alba. Demolished after the fair closed, as most exposition pavilions were, the building was reconstructed on its original site between 1983 and 1986 based on surviving plans and photographs, and it is now regarded as one of the defining works of early architectural Modernism and one of the most influential small buildings of the 20th century.