La Pedrera

Casa Milo was the last private residence that was designed by Gaudi and was built between 1906 and 1912. The style is Art Nouveau. The building's unconventional style which did not respect any rules of conventional style,  its undulating stone facade, the twisting wrought iron balconies,  made it the subject of much criticism, and it was given the nickname La Pedrera, meaning the quarry.

Gaudi made the first sketches in his workshop in the Sagrada Familia. He designed the house as a constant curve, both outside and inside. Casa Mila consists of two buildings, which are structured around two curved courtyards, one circular and one oval, that provide light to the nine stories: basement, ground floor, mezzanine, main floor, four upper floors and an attic. The basement was intended to be the garage, the main floor the residence of the Milas (a flat of 1,323 square metres) and the rest distributed over 20 apartments. The resulting layout is shaped like an asymmetrical 8 because of the different shapes and sizes of the courtyards. 

Viewed from the outside the building has three parts: the main body of the six-storey blocks with winding stone floors, two floors set a block back with a different curve, similar to waves, a smoother texture and whiter colours and with small holes that look like embrasures, and finally the body of the roof.

The facade uses limestone apart from the upper level, which is covered in white tiles, evoking a snowy mountain.

The windows are of varying sizes, designed to optimise the amount of natural light that could enter the building.

Access is through this massive iron gate. The structure of the gate does not follow any symmetry, straight or repetitive pattern. Rather, it evokes bubbles of soap that are formed between the hands or the structures of a plant cell.

The gate was originally used by both people and cars, as access to the garage is in the basement, now an auditorium.

We entered the lobby which is in fact one of the courtyards.

you can look look all the way up

and at the windows of all the apartments

oil paintings adorn the plaster surfaces

With the exception of the main floor, where Gaudi added a prominent interior staircase, the stairways were intended as service entries. The main access to the apartments was by elevator, as Gaudi wanted the people who lived in the apartments to all know each other so by using the elevators, people on different floors would meet one another.

We took the elevator to an apartment on the sixth floor. The windows of the corridor face the courtyard

looking out onto the courtyard

note the iron railings and the detail of the painting

First, the servants' quarters - the ironing room

note all the irons on and around the heater

which is also the sewing room

The servant's bedroom

and her uniform, hanging

The kitchen

There is everything in this, the next room: bicycle, ourdoor clothes, hats

boots, saddle, gun

We are still going round this corridor, but now things are getting fancier

Another bedroom, but fancier this time

The bathroom

The study

Looking out of the window 

at the Avenue de Garcia

The living room.

Gaudi designed the furniture. This was integral to the concept of Modernism in which the architect assumed responsibility for global issues such as the structure and the facade, as well as every detail of the decor, designing furniture and accessories such as lamps, planters, floors and ceilings. The owner complained that there was no straight wall to place her Steinway piano. Gaudi's response was blunt: 'So, play the violin'. The result of these disagreements has been the loss of the decorative legacy of Gaudi, as most of the furniture was removed. Gaudi carved oak doors but these were only included on two floors when the owners discovered the price, and they decided there would be no more at that quality.

The ceilings are quite decorative

We moved on to the main bedroom, where the bed, bedside table

and wardrobe are Art Nouveau and match

the cradle.

The en-suite bathroom.

The dining room

From here, we could look out of the window at the courtyard and the apartments across

and a view of the terrace.

We went up the grand staircase

and wow!

We'd arrived in the attic, and how spectacular is that! Like in Casa Batllo, Gaudi applied the catenary arch as support structure for the roof.

The attic is where the laundry rooms were located. A clear room under a Catalan vault roof, supported by 270 parabolic vaults of different heights and spaced by about 80 cm. The roof resembles both the ribs of a huge animal and a palm, giving the roof-deck a very unconventional shape similar to a landscape of hills and valleys. The shape and location of the courtyards makes the arches higher when the space is narrowed and lower when the space expands.

The builder Bayo explained its construction: 'First the face of a wide wall was filled with mortar and plastered. Then Canaleta indicated the opening of each arch and Bayo put a nail at each starting point of the arch at the top of the wall. From these nails was dangled a chain so that the lowest point coincided with the deflection of the arch. Then the profile displayed on the wall by the chain was drawn and on this profile the carpenter marked and placed the corresponding centering, and the timbrel vault was started with three rows of plane bricks. Gaudi wanted to add a longitudinal axis of bricks connecting all vaults at their keystones'.

It's a vast space.

In the attic there was also an exhibition of some of the furniture that Gaudi designed, including this two-seat sofa, that aimed to use rounded forms that adjusted to the human morphology and did without upholstery, leaving a nude shape, so to speak. Gaudi was the precursor of ergonomic design.

We arrived on the roof, the most spectacular space. As I mentioned earlier, it resembles both the ribs of a huge animal and a palm, giving the roof-deck a very unconventional shape, similar to a landscape of hills and valleys. Because of this undulation, there are steps everywhere, going up and down - you can see the undulations clearly in this photograph.

The roof is crowned with skylights, staircase exits, fans and chimneys. All of these elements, constructed out of brick covered with lime, broken marble or glass, have specific architectural functions but are also real sculptures integrated into the building.

Specifically, there are six skylights/staircase exits, twenty eight chimneys in several groupings, two half-hidden vents whose function is to renew the air in the building, and four domes that discharge to the facade. The staircases also house the water tanks, some of which are snail-shaped.

Everything undulates, and the whole time, you go up or down the steps

This is a plan of the roof: you can see the two courtyards and the six staircase exits and how everything undulates

Looking down one of the courtyards

and looking down the other one, the one we stood in when we entered the building

Great views of the Passeig de Gracia

Little unexpected details, like this

or this

And last but not least, a note explains: 'The Legendary Guardians of the Rooftop. Don't be misled: they're not chimneys. What you can see on this remarkable rooftop are the guardians of this house. Some of them as warriors. Others as giants who come alive at night under a full moon... In any case, they now speak for us from legendary heights, mocking poems about giants written in Catalan (Joan Marofall, Jacint Verdaguer), in Spanish (Jorge Luis Borges, Luis de Gongora) and in English (Lord Byron and Tennyson).

Do they remind you of anything? Does Star Wars come to mind by any chance?

The poet Pere Gimferrer called the stepped roof of La Pedrera, 'the garden of warriors'. 

Some people say that the interior layout of La Pedrera comes from studies that Gaudi made of medieval fortresses. This image is reinforced by the seeming appearance of the rooftop chimneys as sentinels with great helmets.

We took the lift down, left this grand building, had a last look and moved on to the Sagrada Familia.