At the end of the 19th century, Gaudí designed the most spectacular and luxurious building in Barcelona. This place, commissioned by the bourgeois Eusebi Güell, was built with stone, coated with delicate marble and decorated with high quality wood. Its inauguration coincided with the holding in Barcelona of the 1888 World Fair Exhibition and housed diverse social and official functions. The building surprised the citizens and earned the admiration of the visitors because it radically broke with the classical typology of the palatial constructions of the city.

Fireplace

Gaudí's genius transformed a terraced house, characteristic of the district of the Example of the 19th century, into one of the most outstanding buildings in Barcelona's architecture: Batlló House. Gaudí undertook a global reform. To the façade he added a gallery, new balconies and polychrome ceramics. Inside he reorganized the spaces and unified the courtyards and the existing staircase in order to achieve more light and ventilation. He completed this intervention with the addition of two floors finished with a spectacular ceramic crowing.

Güell Park is the dream come true of an entrepreneurial businessman, Eusebi Güell, and of a revolutionary architect who, based on the English model of city-gardens proposed the transformation of a large estate in the north of Barcelona, rocky and unleveled, into a residential area. Despite the wild appearance of the park, everything in it was planned: the accesses, the market, the main square, the drainage, the reservoirs, the roads and paths, the staircases, the fences... Although the First World War meant the failure of this real-estate operation, the state in which the project was felt allows us to discover the town developer Gaudí, a defender of nature, creator of pastoral settings and experimenter of new constructive techniques while taking inspiration from popular culture. A park reflecting his ideas of symbiosis between man and nature.

The most visited building in Barcelona which, undoubtedly, identifies the city around the world is a work by Gaudí. In 1883, the architect agreed to continue a project of neo-Gothic features already started but redesigned it completely, envisaging it as monumental and with exuberant decoration and he worked on it until his death in 1926.   In an original way, he applied forms of ruled geometry to it. Hyperbolic paraboloids, convex vaults helicoids and hyperboloids only hint at the complexity of its structure which exemplifies the essence of the knowledge and constructive experience of Gaudí. All the elements of the temple, both architectural and ornamental, reveal a symbolic basis from the Christian tradition.

(1901-1902)

From 1901 to 1902, Gaudí built the entrance and surrounding wall for an estate owned by his friend, Hermenegild Miralles Anglès, on Sr. Güell's old private road, at what is now Passeig Manuel Girona, No. 55, in the Les Corts de Sarrià quarter of Barcelona.  The project that was put in Gaudí's charge consisted only of building the entrance gate and surrounding wall of Finca Miralles (Miralles Estate), although some authors have also attributed to Gaudí the designs for the stately home and the typical Valencian thatched house for the garden, which were built years later by the architect Domènec Sugrañes Gras. Today we can observe the great gate and only a fragment of the wall that Gaudí built.

The first important Gaudí assignment was the design of a summer villa on the outskirts of Barcelona, currently in the north of the city. The project, commissioned by the tile manufacturer Manuel Vicens, included a house and a large garden. The house was equipped with everything necessary for the summer and was well ventilated by lattice blinds. In the garden surrounding the building there was a waterfall and a lake.  Red earth bricks, multicolored Arabian elements, ceramic coatings, plaster applications, decorative paintings and works made of wood and wrought iron are the main elements used by Gaudí in the construction of the house and are notable for their ornamentation.

This small building (200 m2) is one of Gaudí's most radical and modern works and, unfortunately, one of the least known. The architect designed it as a provisional school, annex to the temple of the Sagrada Familia.  Of a single nave -although partitioned into tree classrooms, which explains its plural name-, it is characterized by the undulation of the cascades and the roof which Gaudí achieved by applying variables of ruled geometry. The use of the brick, a cheap and malleable material, allowed a quick and resistant construction. Le Corbusier expressed enthusiasm about its qualities on his visit to Barcelona in 1928.

Mr. Pere Milà, who married a rich widow, Mrs. Roser Segimon, wanted to live in a spectacular house in the most cosmopolitan avenue of the Barcelona of the time; the passeig de Gràcia.   Gaudí was the chosen architect, mainly because he had just built the neighboring Batlló House, considered then the very latest example of the local architecture. Mr. Milà, however, wanted his house to be bigger; monumental. Thus, the architect built two blocks of flats with independent accesses but unified by the same façade, made of stone and with undulating patterns, with large windows allowing good interior lighting.  An amazing structure in the basement which served as a garage, an open plan distribution of the flats which were to be used as dwellings and an outstanding attic supporting the roof are the most significant elements.

When the Calvets, a family of industrialists, decided to have a new dwelling built in Barcelona, they did not hesitate on two points: to commission the project to one of the best known architects of the time and to choose a plot in the most fashionable area. Gaudí constructed the building in Casp Street, following the typology characteristic of the houses of the period, with space for the family business and for the residence of the owners and with flats to rent.  The owners were pleased with the result and Barcelona Town Council was so enthusiastic that it designated Calvet House as the best building in1900.