Architecture

Gaudí expressed it clearly: “My structural and aesthetic ideas have an indisputable logic. It has really made me wonder that they have not been applied before and that I have to be the first to do it. This would be the only thing, if anything, that would make me hesitate. However, I believe that, convinced of the improvement they bring, I have a duty to apply them.”

He also said, “Architecture is the arrangement of light”, and defended that “For an object to be truly beautiful, there mustn’t be anything superfluous in its shape. Its material conditions must make it useful. One must take into account the material available and the uses to which it will be put.”

To analyse and understand his work, it is necessary to see architecture as a whole, in which function, beauty and structure are closely tied. In addition to their structural excellence, the construction shapes are very beautiful. In his work, form, function and beauty merge into one.

The façade is not structural: it is a non-load bearing wall called a curtain wall. The stone blocks (more than 6,000) are joined to the structure by metal elements. There are three types of stone: in the lower parts and some of the structural elements, limestone from Garraf; in large pieces, stone from Vilafranca del Penedès, and sporadically (some window frames) limestone from Ulldecona.

The wrought-iron railings on the 32 balconies are made from scrap iron, iron bars and chains. The balconies are quite large, both because of the stone projection of the balcony and the concavity of the façade, so that they are small terraces in a house that went beyond the traditional idea of a balcony. At the same time, they show outstanding innovation: the drains that Gaudí placed below the level of the flooring in the house; so the street is perfectly visible from inside the flat. The first iron railing, on the second floor, was made in the workshops of the Badia brothers in Barcelona, where Gaudí personally supervised its execution. The various elements that make up the grilles are joined together with screws and rivets.  

Gaudí wanted to facilitate communication between the interior and the exterior, so, at a time when large panes of glass weren’t available, he fitted together a set of irregular shapes to create a grid of small, protected panes at the bottom (where there is more risk of breakage) and larger, brighter panes at the top. This structure acts as a grille and a door, which cars can enter in the centre and tenants, on the sides.

The semi-basements of La Pedrera have large openings that were protected with iron grilles. The 29 grilles on the semi-basements disappeared when the coal bunkers were converted into retail premises. There are currently only four grilles left in different collections: one in the New York Museum of Modern Art and the other three in the Gaudí House Museum. At La Pedrera, there are two of them at the Passeig de Gracia entrance and a copy on the Carrer de Provença façade. 

The rear façade follows an undulating concave-convex rhythm similar to that of the main façade. The movement is accentuated by the rounded pillars (protruding from the façade plane) and the double moulding of the cornices of the floor slabs on each floor, which give rise to balconies that occupy the full length of the façade. The façade is made with lime and cement plaster and stuccoed with a coppery brown colouring.

Gaudí anticipated the needs of modern life and built a garage for carriages and motor vehicles in the basement, the first in a residential building. The wide spiral ramps facilitated access for horses and carriages, but also for motor vehicles, the use of which became widespread from 1900.

The courtyard floors are supported by lightweight cast-iron pillars. The beams and girders for the elliptical courtyard on Carrer de Provença follow a traditional layout, while the cylindrical courtyard on Passeig de Gràcia features an original metal structure (reminiscent of a bicycle wheel) made up of two concentric cylindrical girders, tensioned by radial beams that come from the same point on the outside and end up on the top and bottom of the curved girder. This way, they use tension and compression to lock an eighty-centimetre structure together in a single piece capable of supporting a surface area twelve metres in diameter.

Gaudí was able to innovate on the type of buildings that existed previously. In addition to small ventilation shafts, he built two large courtyards to provide better lighting and good ventilation in all flats. The interior façades of these courtyards are no longer just by-products, they are truly a riot of shapes, light and colours, and a backdrop for radical chromatic experimentation.

Symbolist painter Aleix Clapés (1846-1920) was charged with overseeing the pictorial decoration at La Pedrera. The project for the foyers consisted of a series of murals imitating tapestries with mythological themes from the National Heritage collection.

In the Passeig de Gràcia foyer, the tapestries represent the love of Vertumnus, god of the seasons, and Pomona, goddess of fruit and gardens (as told by Ovid in book XIV of the Metamorphoses). 

In the Carrer de Provença foyer, different tapestries converge in the same space, without well-defined contours or edges, and a greater interpretative freedom can be appreciated. On the one hand, the deadly sins: wrath and gluttony; on the other, the series of the heroes of the Trojan War and the adventures of Telemachus, both inspired by two passages from the Iliad and the Odyssey. 

An outstanding contribution, which represents a variation on his imitation of tapestries, is the trompe-l’oeilwork on the wall next to and above the staircase that connects the Passeig de Gracia foyer to the main floor. 

This pictorial work creates the illusion of walking along a floating staircase that runs next to a garden, supported by columns on both sides. To achieve this, Clapés created painted columns that are identical to the real ones, located at the end of the steps. 

The most important innovation at La Pedrera compared to flats for rent in the Eixample was getting rid of the main staircase: tenants entered the homes via the lift or the service stairs.

The building’s vertical communications are three staircases and two lift shafts. Lifts play an important role in the innovative layout Gaudí proposed for a modern house well equipped with services.

The flats are located on four storeys. Each of them looks onto the main façade, where the living rooms and main bedrooms are located, and another part faces the inner façade of the block courtyard, where we find other bedrooms and service rooms. The interior circulation is via a wide, light-filled corridor that runs around the courtyard.

Gaudí brought a new approach to the building. La Pedrera has a structure of stone pillars and solid brick, which clearly anticipates modern architecture that became common twenty years later. This way, Gaudí was able to eliminate the load-bearing walls and distribute the building with much more freedom, both the part used for housing and the large courtyards for ventilation and light.

Gaudí designed the front doors to the flats with large viewers featuring iron strips. In addition to being decorative, these allow people inside and outside the flat to communicate without opening the door, and mail to be delivered through a slot on the side. The door handle fits the hand perfectly.

The arches on the doors and window frames inside the flat are decorated with unique plaster mouldings with a wide variety of themes. Gaudí used decorative details in the form of shells, flowers, fruit, ribbons, bows and geometric patterns, among others.

The door separating the living and dining rooms is made up of three parts: the central section, consisting of a door and two windows on the top, which can be opened on both sides, and two side sections that join at the central door. All the leaves fold up and are concealed within the side partitions to make the most of the space in the rooms.

What makes the ceilings at La Pedrera truly unique is that they escape the standard horizontal plane and become surfaces in relief, following the sinuosity of the entire building. Gaudí drew the forms on a plan and the plasterer reproduced them on the ceiling. They depict circumferences, ellipses, spirals and scrolls, and some of them have inscriptions and even poetic phrases. The purpose of the suspended ceilings was to conceal the structure of the beams and vaults, and to complement the look of the room. They consist of a braided reed support, which is nailed to boards fixed to the rafters. These woven reeds gave what we know as the suspended ceiling its name in Spanish: techos planos de caña.

Gaudí built an attic on the floor slab of the top floor. In order not to increase the weight of the building, he resorted to a succession of 270 brick arches, which Gaudí called “balanced” or catenary arches, on which the roof rests. These arches are light, easy to build, stand on their own and don’t need any buttresses. The attic originally housed the communal laundry room, clotheslines, storage rooms and machinery for the two lifts.

The attic floor was also the thermal or insulating chamber for the building. In summer, the windows were opened to get a draught and in winter they were kept closed to lock in the heat of the sun.

Around the attic floor there is a walkway. It is a winding route along the perimeter of the building, at the height of the cornice line. Along this route there are four cupolas shaped like Prussian helmets, at the points the architect considered most necessary for stability.

In Gaudí’s own words: “Buildings need to have a double roof, just like people have a hat and a parasol.” This was Gaudí’s understanding of the protective function of the attic and the dignification and personalisation of the roof.

Every part of the roof is designed to serve a purpose. The architectural and sculptural elements arranged throughout this space correspond to three types of constructions: the badalots (or stairwells), the ventilation towers and the chimneys. The perimeter stone railings are undulating and follow the shape of the façade. The roof terrace is characterised by order, aesthetic quality and highly functional construction elements.

The most voluminous elements are the six stairwell exits, or badalots. Inside each of them there is a spiral staircase that allows access to the rooftop from the attic. Gaudí used curved forms, derived from ruled geometry, to make the building lighter. The stairwells are seven metres tall.

There are 29 chimneys located on the roof. These are flues from the coal-fired central heating system, no longer in use. There are two on their own and the others are grouped in sets of two, five or seven. The shapes of the chimneys follow an internal and external layout that obeys the aerodynamic displacement of the smoke. They are four metres high and clad on the outside with lime mortar and plaster.

The two ventilation towers had the function of renewing the air in the attic. They are five metres high and are clad on the outside with lime mortar and plaster.

Trencadís (mosaic made up of irregular pieces of ceramic, marble or glass) acts as a waterproof protector for the elements, while adding an aesthetic note of colour. Four of the six exits of the stairwells have an exterior cladding made from recycled fragments of Ulldecona stone, white marble of the Macael, Tranco or Carrara types, or white enamelled tiles from Valencia.

The only group of chimneys with trencadís mosaic is covered with fragments of dark green champagne bottles.

Gaudí had begun to design a model for the perimeter grille of the inner courtyards that followed the sinuosity of the building, but he was unable to finish it. Due to the danger of leaving the space empty, the owners installed a hexagonal mesh as a protective fence.

Gaudí left no detail to chance. On either side of two staircases, Gaudí built small arches, covered with white trencadís mosaic, which help to lock the structure together and at the same time frame some of his works. One of the arches provides a perfect view of the Basilica of the Sagrada Família. Gaudí calculated the exact height of the finished work so that it would fit perfectly into the structure.