Casa Mila 2.0

Continuing with my Gaudi research, I have found a couple of interesting videos on Gaudi. I'm posting the first one here... although it might be a little difficult for non-catalonian speakers. But it has beautiful grainy black and white images from the 20's and 30's, and video fragments from who knows when. Anybody that speaks Spanish will make out about 80% of it, knowing French helps a little bit more.

Casa Mila

Image from wikipedia.org

The Casa Mila, better known as "La Pedrera" in its native Barcelona, is a building that has fascinated me long before I studied Architecture. I remember my dad brought me several books on Gaudi from a trip he made to Spain, he thought I would like them, he was right. He probably knew long before myself that I would become something like an architect, with my long hours spent playing with my legos (I still have some of those). I digress...

The thing is that as I learn more and more about Gaudi's architecture, I learn more about his genius. The Casa Mila, contrary to the standard of the time, has no bearing walls, only columns hold it up from the basement to the top floor. This was so for the simple reason that it allowed him to build curved walls, in plan and in section. So this, as far as I know, is the first free plan house.

According to history, Le Corbusier created the open floor plan in his Five Points of Architecture created during the 1920's, and epitomized in the Villa Savoye finished in 1931. The Casa Mila, with a very similar concept behind it was finished in 1910, 20 years before Le Corbusier published his Five Points. It is surely conceivable that, since Le Corbusier and Gaudi were contemporaries, they had met and talked about architecture over coffee, or that good ol' Corbu had studied Gaudi's work.

It is certainly something to think about... Gaudi is definitely a prophetic architect, and his architecture is definitely a premonition of modernity and Modern Architecture.

Gaudi in the Favela

Last Saturday I was flipping through channels on my TV and stopped on BBC World when I heard a voice with British accent talk about Gaudi's architecture and how desirable his houses and apartments were. I was fascinated by what they really showed me, it was "Favela Fantasy Gives Rise to Gaudi House". It was a piece on a house in a Sao Paulo Favela called by the neighbors "Casa de Pedra" or the House of Stone. Estevao Silva da Conceicao, the owner, has definitely mirrored Gaudi's work without even knowing the architect's name.


He started his house around a rose bush that he planted, in order to have a place to live and to protect the plant he built around it using organic shapes and found construction materials like pebbles, dishes and saucers; later on he used materials like clocks and typewriters, storing the materials before starting another part of the house. Today, two decades later after he started, a time frame comparable to the time that Gaudi took to build a project, we get a labyrinthine set of hallways, stairs and spaces that have been compared to Parc Guell (dioxmat's Flickr Photoset here) in Barcelona.


The house is still a work in progress, growing as his family grows and changes its needs.