A New Installation Covers Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion with a Grid of Laser Lights

Organized by Fundació Mies van der Rohe and Chicago-based nonprofit MAS Context, the latest in a series of site-specific artistic interventions at Mies van der Rohe and Lily Reich‘s Barcelona Pavilion features a new immersive sound and laser installation by Chicago-based design studio Luftwerk, in a collaboration with MAS Studio’s founding director and MAS Context’s editor-in-chief Iker Gil, and Spanish sound editor Oriol Tarragó. Dubbed “Geometry of Light,” the installation will be on view through Feb. 17.

Using the pavilion’s gridded floor plan, vertical planes, and materiality as its foundation, “Geometry of Light” aims to “trace, highlight, and alter the composition of the Pavilion,” according to a Fundació press release. The installation features a projected grid of red lasers, which “extends beyond the [pavilion’s] steel-framed glass walls,” and an auditory component, which “uses the pitch of the space to create a tonal reading,” according to the same release. “Together, these elements coalesce—both unifying and disjointing the physical and perceptual space—in a new, altered perception and interpretation of the Barcelona Pavilion.”

Since 1999, the Fundació Mies van der Rohe has invited architects and artists to create temporary, site-specific interventions for the modernist pavilion. Previously, Ai Weiwei (in 2009), Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA (in 2011), and Anna & Eugeni Bach (in 2017), among others, have transformed the pavilion.

This coming October,”Geometry of Light” will be installed at the Farnsworth House, another masterpiece of the architect in Plano, Ill.