The pavilion’s broad context – Europe midway between
the two World Wars in which Germany was a principal protagonist – was infinitely more charged politically than that of the later Farns worth House built in the peaceful sylvan landscape of rural Illinois. As a contribution to an international
exposition, set in juxtaposition to pavilions of other countries,
the Barcelona Pavilion was intended as a symbol for a nation
that had reinvented itself – as what is historically known as
the Weimar Republic – after the social and cultural upheaval
of the First World War. These challenges and conditions,
perhaps assisted by the short time in which the project had
to be designed and completed, stimulated Mies to produce
one of the most sophisticated works of architecture in history.