And no one man is more responsible for Barcelona’s bold architectural look than Antoni Gaudi, a founding father of the Modernisme movement, which stresses a fluidity of thought and motion which had never before been seen in the modern world. 2006 marks the 100th anniversary of the completion of the project which transformed an already-standing building into the wonder that is Casa Batlló. Among other honors, it was recently added to the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was once quoted as saying: “I call architecture frozen music.” Had he been alive to walk down Barcelona’s famed Passeig de Gracia and seen the unique Casa Batlló rising up above him, he likely would have said something like: “Yes, this is exactly what I was talking about.”

Casa Batlló sits among a block of buildings which look as different from each other as night looks to day.  This ‘block of discord’ as it is known was the result of a game of “Can you top this?” among the high-brow owners of the buildings along the street at the turn of the century. Gaudi’s entry into the game marked the high point as well as the end point of the match.

Any attempts to define Casa Batlló in terms Art Nouveau or Modernism runs the risk of negating the smaller details which give the building its true character. According to the building’s website, www.casabatllo.es: “If one were forced to define Casa Batlló, one would have to describe it as an architectural smile, an outburst of the compositional pleasure of someone in full command of his own individual style that allowed him to escape any imitation or school, whether in his own day or subsequently.”

The house was originally built between 1875 and 1877 and in 1900 it was bought by the Spanish industrialist Josep Battló who commissioned Gaudí to tear it down and build a new home in its place. Gaudí managed to convince Battló to remodel the existing building instead of tearing it down, and between 1904 and 1906 he redesigned the facade and roof, added an extra floor and completely remodeled the interior. While the Battló family and their servants occupied two floors of the building, the other floors were also renovated and put up for rent. With the exception of the former Battló residence, the building remains occupied with tenants to this day.

The facade of the Casa Batlló is made of local sandstone covered with colorful trencadis (a Catalan type of mosaic). One of the first recyclers, Gaudi used the rejected and imperfect tiles from his other projects to complete the façade as well as the mosaic on the back of the building and on the chimneys atop the building. The effect is one that fuses discord and harmony in a way that only he could accomplish. While there is seemingly no pattern to the placement of the mosaic tiles, Gaudi reportedly stood in the street and shouted directions to the workmen in order to put the tiles in their exact places and give him the effect for which he was looking. 

Gaudí, much like later architects/nature lovers like the Austrian Friedensreich Hundertwasser, abhorred straight lines and preferred organic, nonlinear patterns instead. The flow of the exterior of the building cannot properly be explained with the use of straight lines, but rather waves on the ocean.

Also included in the construction of the exterior is the use of skull shapes for balconies and bones for pillars, which has earned it the unflattering nickname “House of Bones.” The large window on the second floor, which provided the main source of daylight for the Batlló family apartment, and the oval-shaped windows on either side and above it also earned it the nickname “House of Yawns.” 

Once inside the building, however, one realizes that these nicknames do not aptly describe the interior at all.

Upon entering into the building, the visitor is greeted with a wide and curving stairway which leads to the second floor of the building and the main rooms of the Batlló apartment. The curving, wooden handrail is expertly crafted in such a way that it perfectly fits the contours of the human hand while walking up the steps. 

It is here that the full experience of the building begins in earnest and Gaudi’s attention to detail becomes even more apparent. The anteroom boasts a fireplace nook with built-in benches for a couple to sit on one side and a chaperone to sit watchfully on the other. The visitor slowly begins to realize that there seem to be no right angles present anywhere; instead, everything, even the walls and ceilings, gently curve and undulate as if mimicking the surface of a calm body of water. Walls turn into ceilings and floors without interruption, thereby creating a uniform space.

The rooms inside Casa Batlló are unbelievably odd and yet still warm and inviting, as if the visitor had just stumbled upon some sort of magical, underwater castle. Reminiscent of the Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Casa Batlló has a deeply aquatic and natural theme which runs throughout the entire building, from the aquatic blue tiled walls of the inner stairwell to snail-shell inspired lines on the ceilings.

Passing from room to room, one crosses through exquisitely-made doors made of wood and hand-blown glass, with bubbles of air still trapped in them from the day of their creation. Looking into these colored glass discs, one even gets the feeling of breathing underwater. While there is a clear progression to the floor plan, it is sometimes difficult to get a sense of where one room ends and another begins. 
 
 

One Gaudí scholar, Philippe Thiébaut, has even suggested that the rooms of the Batlló apartment unfold like a process of cellular growth.

Indeed, Gaudi himself was once quoted as saying: “Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator.” By replacing straight lines with organic curves and choosing his materials and colors wisely, Casa Batlló is a tribute to and triumph of that mode of thought.

Continuing with the aquatic theme, portholes are placed throughout the main apartment’s walls and ceilings to allow more light to flow in from the skylight atop the open staircase in the hollow middle of the building. 

Among other impressive feats contained within the building, Gaudi used his genius to maximize the amount of sunlight that the main apartment received because it was on the second floor of the six story building. The main window, which affords a wide view of Passeig de Gracia, is widely considered the centerpiece of the apartment, and its ingenuity lies in its simplicity in solving the problems of light and heat distribution.

Gaudí creates the impression of a single, large curved window by setting smaller panels at minimal angles to each other. These panels are linked to each another by slide mechanisms so that when it is opened, the whole living room will be flooded with light and air from the street.

Swirling wooden slats built into the window’s wooden frame can also be opened and closed to guarantee a uniform temperature throughout the apartment and the technique is repeated in other rooms as well, as in a series of slats resembling fish gills to allow more or less air into the knitting room from the inner courtyard. - Article Continued Below -