ARCHITECTURE OR EXHIBITION? THE FOUNDATIONS OF MIES VAN DER ROHE'S ARCHITECTURE.

"Anyone even modestly familiar with Mies's architecture will associate their time in Germany with Exhibitions..." This begins one of the few essays dealing with the exhibition work of Mies van der Rohe. Although, the exhibits were an extremely important part in his career, there are very few texts that focus on this particular theme and study them extensively. During this period he made a long list of ephemeral constructions which began with the Weissenhof Housing Colony and continued onto other significant sets like the Velvet and Silk Cafe in Berlin, the German Pavilion in Barcelona, or the 'Dwelling for a Married Couple' for the German Building Exhibition in Berlin, all of which are extensively referenced. However, architectural criticism has overlooked some of his exhibitions, without giving them the importance that they deserve. 

Although the European period of Mies van der Rohe was caracterized, as a time eminently theoretical, the fact is that he built a large number of temporary architectures; together with Lilly Reich, he designed more than eighty exhibition spaces for the industry and the German government. All these projects were the conceptual basis of his later architecture... which were the reflection and experimentation that served as a laboratory and school. And so, the motivation behind this investigation tries to shed some light on the influence that like Lilly Reich as well as other temporary architects, assumed in the formation and subsequent realization of the constructed work by one of the most important architects in the Twentieth century. 

Firstly, the role that Lilly Reich played in the professional life of Mies van der Rohe will be investigated in more detail. No one knows why he kept quiet about his relationship with Lilly Reich. He never mentioned anything about his professional collaboration, privately nor publicly, nor before or after her death in 1947. Neither was the importance that Reich had on the conservation of his drawings, letters, sketches and photographs mentioned. Setting aside Mies silence, it is true that in the year that they began working together was the year in which his professional career was launched; also, and after analysing both their exhibition Works, it is a fact that his furniture and interior designs show many similarities that were carried out by Reich prior to her solo career. Consequently, a number of questions arise, which have not been solved neither argued in any architectural publication. Was it Lilly Reich who boosted and accelerated the process of the modern architecture in the work of Mies van der Rohe? Which were, if any, the foundations or principles that Mies took from the exhibitions and design of Reich?

The second aspect to be developed in this investigation has to do with the role in which the exhibitions played in the permanent architecture of Mies van der Rohe. Reviewing his European work, we realize that the experimentation stage can be summarized in two fields of research; housing and exhibition space. Both themes, were so up to par, that sometimes we could ask ourselves what conceptual differences exist between the main space of the Tugendhat house and the Barcelona Pavilion?, or between any of those spaces and dwellings for the Exhibition of the Berlin Building in 1931.  Can the exhibition architecture be considered within the same typology as that of permanent architecture, differed only by their location, - either inside existing buildings or real locations with a certain client- and whether or not they could be dismounted? What is the difference between the character of exhibition architecture of Mies and the architectural character of his exhibitions? Where is the limit between the architecture and the exhibition?  Starting from Mies' idea to highlight the character of 'architectural' above the 'exhibition' what will be identified in this discourse are the concepts that Mies experimented with in his exhibitions and then transferred to the actual architecture; in others words and to paraphrase the title of this thesis, what are the foundations of Mies architecture that were born in the contexts of these exhibitions.