Archiwum Edukacji #19 – Nanufars of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich. On restoring water plants for architecture. Ivan Blasi in conversation with Centrala Group

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 visitors to the pavilion.

During the meeting on the square in front of the Zachęta building, we will talk about the challenges of introducing nature into architectural icons - shifting from design thinking to process thinking and gradually giving up control. The discussion with invited guests will be preceded by a screening of film documentation. The panel will include Ivan Blasi, curator from the Mies van der Rohe Foundation in Barcelona, Malgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis from the CENTRALA group. The discussion will be moderated by project curator Aleksandra Kędziorek.

Ivan Blasi was born in Barcelona in 1976 and studied Architecture at the Escola Superior d´Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB) where he graduated in 2002. He co-founded the architecture studio 100to Arquitectura in 2003 and has been teacher at the Barcelona Architecture Centre since 2005, concentrating on 20th Century Architecture and Contemporary Architecture in Europe. He collaborated in several programmes of Docomomo Ibérico (2007-2010) and was Secretary General of Docomomo International between 2010 and 2015. He is the curator of programs and prizes at the Mies van der Rohe Foundation in Barcelona where he is in charge of the EU Mies van der Rohe Award and the interventions in the Barcelona Pavilion.