Professor Dietrich Neumann recently published two books, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion: An Accidental Masterpiece and a companion book The Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe: One Hundred Texts since 1929. Both books came out in December 2020, published by Birkhaüser.

With the temporary exhibition pavilion of the German Reich at the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Mies van der Rohe designed an architectural icon, but also a controversial monument of the way the Weimar Republic portrayed itself. The pavilion is one of the most unusual success stories in the history of architecture: Despite its short existence, its reputation grew steadily in the following decades, thanks in part to magnificent photographs. It was soon considered the constructed manifesto of the Modern Age, and its spatial and "ideational" ambitions were called "a milestone of Modern architecture."

Neumann's smaller companion book presents 100 selected texts about this much-discussed building, written then and now: from the opening speech by the Spanish king, to newspaper articles and private letters, voices of contemporary architects, architecture critics and historians, and even a text by artist Ai Weiwei, who created an installation in the outdoor area of the pavilion in 2010.