La Pedrera (Casa Milá)

The Casa Milá was Gaudí´ s last work before starting with the construction of the Sagrada Familia. It is a private block of apartments, with an irregular rectangle form, and that is divided into two main courtyards inside, a rounded one and an oval one. The rough touch of the natural stone gives it a more fantastic aspect.

Its façade is undulating, harmonious, and mainly changeable. The building is undulated over the intersection of two streets. It has huge windows and forged iron balconies. There are not load- bearings walls, so it is leaned on pillars and beams. To support the façade, Gaudí created a kind of projecting thick beams with form of T where the stone blocks are leaned. To get the wished form of the beams, he used naval engineering techniques.

The chimneys are placed on the roof, with sculptures that remain us of warriors. Some of them are decorated with pieces of bottle glasses. They create a forest of figures that surprise due to its variety and its modernist forms. You access to the upper section through eight spiral staircases that are outwardly decorated with pieces of marble flagstones that let Gaudí give them the curved forms that came to his mind.

Due to the owners´ refusal to place a sculptural group of the virgin surrounded by archangels, Gaudí does not finish his project. The current owner of the building, "the Caixa de Catalunya", has dedicated an area of this building to the Espai Gaudí, where scale models, drawings and documents related to the great architect are shown.