Facade restoration La Pedrera
08/05/18

Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation has completed the restoration of La Pedrera’s least known façade, its rear façade. The work, carried out over a period of nine months, has restored the original textures, colours and other features of Gaudí’s building, such as the stuccowork and paintings. This is the third restoration of the façade, following the previous one undertaken in 2007 and the first one in 1995.

Improvements to the stuccowork, facings and slabs

Ten years on since the previous restoration, work has now been done to repair the stuccowork, the cracks caused by damp, as well as part of the facings and slabs. Cleaning was also included in the restoration plan.

Special mention must be made of the soundings done to assess spaces with large cracks, for which small parts of the façade had to be reproduced. In the case of other fissures, the injection of resin was sufficient.

The work began in August 2017 and has continued until now, the final act being the dismantling of the scaffolding covering the façade of the inner courtyard. The restoration was carried out in two phases, floor by floor, beginning at the top of the building and ending in the basement.

The other façade

The rear façade, visible only from the buildings around the inner courtyard of the street block or from a small space accessible from the ground floor of La Pedrera, follows a concave-convex undulating rhythm similar to that of the main façade. The movement is accentuated by the rounded pillars—which project from the plane—and the double moulding of the cornices of the ceiling and floor slabs on each storey, which create balconies running the whole length of the façade. The main façade is made of bush-hammered stone, whereas the undulating walls of the exterior were given a coat of lime and cement that was later stuccoed with a coat of lime and brown pigment with quite a reddish tone.

La Pedrera was declared a World Heritage Site due to its outstanding universal value in 1984 by UNESCO. It is also included as a category A property on the list of Historical and Artistic Architectural Heritage of the City of Barcelona and is registered as a Historical and Artistic Monument of National Interest, among other heritage-related accolades it has received. Every intervention on the building must comply with the directives issued by these bodies. The restoration of the rear façade, like the restoration of the main façade in 2014, has to follow the guidelines laid down by the Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation regarding the ongoing conservation and maintenance of La Pedrera.

La Pedrera: A beacon for the Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation

La Pedrera is the central offices and the main amenity managed by the Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation, an independent private foundation that allocates all the revenue raised by the activities in the building to social, environmental, educational and cultural initiatives. More than 400,000 people throughout Catalonia benefit from these projects every year.

 

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