Dezeen’s A-Zdvent calendar: Barcelona Chair by Mies van der Rohe

The   first version of the chair was created to inhabit the German Pavilion for the International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain, in 1929, also designed by Rohe. The German architect designed the chair in collaboration with his long-term partner and fellow architect   Lilly Reich, who taught interior and furniture design   at the Bauhaus during Rohe’s time as head of the art school. Matching leather straps are used to support the foam cushions. It was described as «the chair of the century» by Rohe’s biographer Franz Schultz, who called   it the architect’s greatest work. Second in our A-Zdvent calendar this year is the Barcelona Chair by Modernist architect Mies van der Rohe. The pavilion’s brief was to provide a space to welcome the Spanish king and queen and the form for the Barcelona Chair   grew out of Rohe and Reich’s   designs for white-kid upholstered thrones. Upholstered in cow hide, the surface of the seat and back is covered with 40 individual pieces of leather. It was demolished at the end of the fair, but rebuilt on the same site in the in the Catalan capital in the 1980.