Passing Casa Batllo on your way back to Las Ramblas from Sagrada Familia is to find a Faberge egg in the sofa. Many visitors to Barcelona will first encounter Gaudi’s finest work like this, and fall in love with its iridescent asymmetry.
You see a dragon roof across the street, a sword in its belly. Bones are mullions and skull-balconies hang high. Top left, eyes half-closed, you envision a caped Phantom of the Opera next to the guilty blade. The façade is stolid and fluid. No two of its seven floors are the same. It breathes life and death.
Vitruvius treatises on architecture have survived two millennia and the Batllo family home comfortably exceeds the Roman’s three criteria: firmitas, utilitas, venustas.
Firmness, Commodity and Delight are more than applied detail in Casa Batllo, they are in her very bones. But soon modernism would wow the Catalan capital. Out went ornamentation and organic fluidity, in came simplicity and angularity. Mies Van Der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion is in The International Style and the world over Faberge eggs became a plain white ovals.
Mies’ mantra was Less is More and his cool Pavillion is a crisp contrast to Gaudi’s gaudy bauble. Modernism gave us the skyscraper and Mies’ career peaked with Seagram Building in Manhattan, designed with Phyllis Lambert, daughter of the CEO. Every floor is identical. Meis was fond of saying god is in the details, but Phyllis was a more visible hand.
Josep Batllo’s courage was the catalyst for the beauty on Passeig de Garcia: mercurial architects need brave clients. Battlo was richly rewarded for his trust in Gaudi, the family Casa was an instant head-turner at the dawn of the 20th century. (Lambert’s too, half a century later; both are icons of their era.)
Casa Batllo is the beating heart and best of the four buildings by signature architects in the Block of Discord. Its riotous free-form interior is nascent Art Nouveau on MDMA, delivering the peerless gifts promised by an exterior that moves and shimmers.
A UNESCO World Heritage site, this architectural gem would simply be preternaturally beautiful, were it not anchored to the city’s history through the story of her most enduring legend, Sant Jordi and the Dragon. But it is… and that makes it magical.
Enjoy this surreal tour, dragons and all (https://www.behance.net/gallery/14179077/DRAGON-Alive-in-Casa-Batllo-Barcelona).