Carrer Sardenya and Carrer Mallorca. Barcelona

In 1908, the Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph, a body which decades earlier had sponsored the project of the Sagrada Familia, commissioned Antoni Gaudí to provide a building to accommodate schools for the children of the parish. The new construction occupied land that would later be taken over to build the church’s Passion façade so would eventually be demolished. In spite of the provisional nature and modest dimensions of the project, this building proved to be one of Gaudí’s minor master works. It was admired by famous architects including the rationalist Le Corbusier, who saw it in 1928 and was struck by its beauty and functionality. The schools building was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War and reconstructed once the war ended. At present, moved a few metres to make room for the Sagrada Familia works, it houses a small museum.
The Sagrada Familia schools are a single building the interior of which is divided into three classrooms. They were constructed with brick, a cheap material that was ideal for a project with such a small budget. What stands out is the undulating shape of the walls and roof as well as Gaudi’s original layout which gave the schools an interesting aesthetic quality as well as great structural soundness. In the case of the roof, its sinuous profile also provided a masterly solution to draining off water on rainy days.

Carrer Claudi Güell. Santa Coloma de Cervelló (Baix Llobregat)

In 1898 Eusebi Güell asked Antoni Gaudí to build a church for the textile model village he had founded on the outskirts of Barcelona in 1890. The architect proposed an ambitious project, and devoted ten years to preliminary studies during which he developed an innovative “stereostatic” model of the church. The first stone was laid in October 1908 but six years later, in October 1914, Gaudí abandoned the works, after the project became economically unviable for the Güells. The church was to have one upper and one lower nave with 40-metre high towers, but only the first part was ever built, and the project has become popularly known as “the crypt” in its honour.
Although never finished, the Güell village church is considered one of Gaudí’s masterpieces because it anticipates many of the structural solutions that the architect applied to the Sagrada Familia. The entrance porch consists of inclined columns and parabolic and hyperbolic vaults, used here for the first time in the history of architecture. This unique geometric form is repeated in the walls of the church, with a star-shaped profile pierced by large windows whose stained glass combines crosses with plant forms. Both walls and porch incorporate ornamental details in trencadis, using natural and religious motifs. In the interior, Gaudí achieved an open-plan space thanks to the use of inclined stone and brick pillars. Set over these columns, the catenary arches and ribs that support the ceiling constitute one of the most spectacular panaromas in the Gaudí universe.

Carrer Major. Llinars del Vallès (Vallès Oriental)

“La Miranda” is the popular name of a lookout tower built between 1906 and 1907 at one end of the estate in Llinars del Vallès, beside the Giola river bed, where industrialist Damià Mateu i Bisa spent his summers. It was a present from Mateu to his wife, who used it as a sewing room and for meeting her friends. The ground floor was also used as a garage. Only a drawing remains of the La Miranda project, signed by Gaudí’s disciple Francesc Berenguer i Mestres, but some experts believe that Gaudí himself took part in the work and that this like the Güell Wineries in El Garraf would therefore be a cooperation between the two architects,.
The tower, with three floors and a cylindrical profile, was made of brick and board and covered from the observation point upwards with a dome lined with blue and white ceramic trencadis that recalls the coach house in the Güell estate. From one side of the tower to the other ran a wall very similar to that of the Miralles estate surrounding the Mateu property. The entrance gate had a wrought iron grille designed to resemble a fisherman’s net, like the gate at the Güell Wineries. La Miranda was badly damaged in 1939 towards the end of the Spanish Civil War, when a van of TNT of the retreating republican army exploded alongside it. Abandoned for decades, it was demolished in 1962. Only the entrance gate was saved and transferred to Park Güell.

Passeig de Gràcia, 92. Barcelona

La Pedrera is the last great civil work of Antoni Gaudí, a monumental residential building in the Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona built for Pere Milà and his wife, Roser Segimón, who set up home in the first floor flat and rented out the four upper floors. To adapt it to the changing needs of a building with many tenants Gaudí made use of revolutionary building techniques. Using a structure of pillars and beams combined with a self-supporting non-load-bearing façade he achieved an interior where walls could be demolished and the layout changed at will. This masterly use of space is a direct precursor of the open-plan developments in nineteen-twenties rationalist architecture. Gaudí also laid out the flats in a functional manner around two large patios to ensure good lighting.
Beyond the structural innovations, however, what is most striking in the Casa Milà is the undulating stone façades with their surprising curved forms that recall the folds of a mountain or a cliff face. On completion, the work’s bold exterior was the subject of great controversy and attracted many negative comments, some of which maintained that the building looked like a quarry (“Pedrera”), a name which has stuck to it ever since. Other butts of popular humour were the original wrought iron railings that Gaudí designed for the balconies. Other unusual spaces in La Pedrera are the attic whose brick catenary arches recall the ribs of a whale, and the fantastic undulating roof terrace that incorporates organic-shaped skylights, ventilators and chimneys that constitute veritable sculptures.
Gaudí abandoned the works at the Casa Milà in 1910 after completing the basic structure due to disagreements with its developers, who rejected his proposal to crown the building with an immense sculpture of the Virgin. Pere Milà and Roser Segimón also objected to the architect’s ideas for the interior decoration although these finally went forward, carried out over the years by collaborators of the architect. This entailed completion of the unusual plaster ceilings, the brilliant murals in the entranceway and the encaustic tiled floors with marine motifs designed by Gaudí himself.

Camí La Pobla – Clot del Moro. La Pobla de Lillet (Berguedà)

In 1905 Antoni Gaudí spent a few days a La Pobla de Lillet to supervise the construction of the Catllaràs chalet. The architect stayed at the house of textile manufacturer Joan Artigas i Alart and in return for his hospitality gave the industrialist the sketch of a design for his gardens at the Font de la Magnèsia, near Artigas’ factory. Some months later Gaudí sent some of the workmen from the Park Güell to La Pobla to help to the local builders to complete the gardens.
Thanks to a system of stone and cement stairs and bridges the Artigas gardens occupy both sides of narrow mountain pass carved out by the River Llobregat. Various elements like a bandstand, a cave and several fountains, fully integrated into the landscape and decorated with allegorical animals representing the four evangelists, make for a restful haven in the midst of nature.

Pista Forestal de la Serra del Catllaràs. La Pobla de Lillet (Berguedà)

In July 1904 in Clot del Moro, in the municipality of Castellar de n’Hug on the bank of the River Llobregat the first Portland cement factory in Catalonia was inaugurated, founded by an industrial group headed by Eusebi Güell. The factory was fuelled by coal mined nearby in the pre-Pyrenean Catllaràs mountains. In 1905 Güell commissioned Antoni Gaudí to design a mountain chalet to accommodate the engineers working at the mine.
The Catllaràs chalet is a simple but clearly Gaudian construction whose shape, a single parabolic vault, is both ideal for the snowy climate on this mountain site and recalls the Güell Wineries in El Garraf. The original cement-clad finish was lost, being replaced with slate tiles and many years ago the double circular stairway that Gaudí designed to connect the different floors disappeared.

Carrer Nàpols. Barcelona

Between August and December 1904, Antoni Gaudí built the workshop of the brothers Josep and Lluís Badia i Miarnau, wrought iron craftsmen who collaborated in several of the architect’s works under Joan Oñós, setting up on their own after the latter’s death. The workshop which disappeared decades ago was a modest industrial building, small but with an interesting curved roof that anticipated the solution that Gaudí used years later for the Schools of the Sagrada Familia. It was here that the Badia brothers made some of the most brilliant pieces of wrought iron for Gaudí’s works like the railings of the La Pedrera balconies.

La Rambla, 122. Barcelona

In November 1904 a cinema owned by painter Lluís Graner i Arrufí and built on the ground floor of an existing building by his friend Antoni Gaudí, was inaugurated in the Rambla in Barcelona. This cinema, the Sala Mercè, admitted 200 people and projected its own creations involving the latest cinematography. It also put on musicals and events combining theatre, music and painting directed by the most famous Catalan theatre designers of the day. It was rounded off by a basement display with dioramas set around an artificial cave.
Gaudí’s radical reform of the premises only lasted until 1916 when the building disappeared due to a change of ownership. No images have survived either of the entrance with its wrought iron sign or of the entry to the underground cave, which some say was a homage to the caves of Artà which the architect visited while restoring Mallorca Cathedral. Inside the cinema of which some photographs have survived Gaudí prioritised rational design, making it easier to see the screen and including inclined seating. So as not to distract the public’s attention decoration was kept to a minimum. In spite of this, some interesting details can be seen on the walls including a border with plant decoration and the textured plaster of the walls and ceiling that both improved the acoustics and conveyed the appearance of a cave.

Plaça de la Seu. Palma de Mallorca (Balearic Islands)

Early in 1902 Pere Campins i Barceló, Bishop of Mallorca, asked Antoni Gaudí to restore the cathedral in Palma de Mallorca. The reform was to include the repair of the façades of the Gothic temple, badly damaged by an earth quake in 1851, and redistribution of the interior. The architect visited the island on several occasions during 1902 and 1903, in October presenting the restoration project. The work was started in 1904 and continued in phases until 1914, when Gaudí abandoned the project before work could be begun on the façade due to disagreement with the contractor.
Gaudí’s alterations to the interior of Mallorca Cathedral clearly demonstrate both his highly developed sense of space and his bold approach. Immune to possible criticism, to make the church brighter and better suited to the liturgy Gaudí dismantled the Gothic choir in the middle of the central nave and displaced it to the sides of the presbytery, where he also dismantled the altarpieces and a tribune. Once he had achieved a unified visual perspective that favoured dialogue between the officiant and the faithful, the architect changed the position of the altar and covered it with a new baldachin. Although in principle this was a provisional model pending the definitive work that was never carried out, it is a prime example of Gaudí’s design.

Passeig de Gràcia, 43. Barcelona

The Passeig de Gràcia, the main thoroughfare of the Eixample district, was built in the second half of the nineteenth century. Between late 1904 and early 1906, Gaudí was commissioned by industrialist Josep Batlló i Casanovas to build there what is undoubtedly considered one of his major master works. Although it may seem so at first sight, Casa Batlló was not new but a reform of an existing building. Gaudí transformed its appearance radically, renovating the interior and façades with such original shapes and colours that from the moment the work was completed the building became an icon in the Barcelona urban landscape.
The façade of Casa Batlló, an outburst of Gaudian fantasy, has given rise to many interpretations. Some have compared its curved forms with the waves of the sea, and the ceramic and glass ornamentation that gives it such colour with marine fauna and alga. Others see its cladding as an allusion to confetti at Carnival time, an idea reinforced by the fantasy shapes of the cast iron grilles on the balconies that resemble Venetian masks. The same balconies have also been compared with skulls, and like the surprising bone-shaped columns on the first-floor tribune, are thought to represent the victims of the dragon in the legend of Sant Jordi. The dragon would be symbolised by the roof covered with scale-like ceramics from which rises a tower crowned by a four-armed cross, identified with the sword of Sant Jordi that killed the beast.
Interpretations apart, the main façade of Casa Batlló is a compendium of structural inventions and forms repeated throughout the building: the strange mushroom-shaped chimneys, the back façade with trencadis in natural and geometric shapes, and the beautiful inner courtyard where Gaudí graded the size of the windows and the colour of the ceramic coating progressively to help spread light throughout the interior.

Passeig Manuel Girona, 55-61. Barcelona

Between 1901 and 1902 Antoni Gaudí built the wall and the entrance gate for the estate of his friend, printer and manufacturer of pressed cardboard tiles Ermenegild Miralles i Anglès in Sarrià, an outlying village incorporated into Barcelona in 1921. The architect’s design for the enclosure, of which only a small part is still standing, involved a stone wall and undulating metal grille. The wall joins the gate through a sinuous trefoil arch in which there are two separate doors for carriages and people, also using original curved forms. Two large fibre cement canopies spanning the gate in the shape of a tortoise shell protect both entrances. Finally there are two excellent examples of Gaudí’s wrought iron work: the grille on the pedestrian entrance and the four-armed cross above the gate.

Carrer Bellesguard, 16-20. Barcelona

On the slopes of Tibidabo in the former village now part of Barcelona, Sant Gervasi de Casseroles, Antoni Gaudí built a family house that looked like an unusual Gothic castle. This is the house, known as Bellesguard due to its fine views, that Maria Segués i Molins commissioned him to build in 1900 on the site where King Martin the Humanist had lived in the sixteenth century. The architect took advantage of some of the surviving ruins to construct an architectural homage to Catalonia’s glorious mediaeval past. Unmistakably a Gaudí construction, Bellesguard is full of references to Gothic art, including its trefoil arches, twin balconied windows and battlements that accentuated its castle-like appearance. The building itself is made from stone and adobe and clad with an innovative stone mosaic, and topped with a great tower finished with the Catalan flag and a four-armed cross. Particularly fine in the interior are the hall lit by a large star-shaped window and the attic, similar to those in the Casa Batlló that Gaudí was building at around the same time.
As well as the house, in the Bellesguard estate there is a slim viaduct constructed by Gaudí in 1908 over the Betlem stream. The following year, the architect stopped work on the villa with some details still unfinished, and it was completed by his disciple Domènec Sugrañes i Gras in 1917.

Carrer d’Olot. Barcelona

In July 1899 industrialist Eusebi Güell acquired a large estate on the Muntanya Pelada in Barcelona where he planned to build an extravagant development deep in the countryside with views over the city, based on the garden city model that was springing up in Great Britain at the time. His idea was to divide the land into 72 plots where each customer would build his own house. Güell commissioned development of the estate and the construction of communal amenities from Gaudí, who started work on the project in 1900. Two years later the first plot was sold, but in spite of all Güell’s efforts no more were bought. In 1914, with the commercial failure of the initiative, Gaudí abandoned the works after completing the site’s basic services. Nine years later, Barcelona City Council bought the Park Güell and opened it as a municipal garden.
Park Güell may have been a failure in business terms, but in architectural and urban development terms it has undoubtedly become one of the most successful and famous of the works of Gaudí, then nearing fifty and maturity as an artist. Inside the estate the architect built a network of paths fully integrated into their environment, compensating for the steep slope of the land by means of highly original viaducts and porticoes. There are several ways in, but the only one built by Gaudí was the main entrance, flanked by two pavilions, one a gatehouse and the other for services, featuring attractive and original soft shapes. Once inside a monumental stairway crowned by a fountain in the shape of a dragon beckons visitors to the central areas of the park: the hypostyle room, a space with 86 Greek-inspired columns designed to accommodate the market, and on top of this the great square which Gaudí surrounded with a unique serpentine bench, decorated with trencadis (ceramic fragments) by his collaborator, Josep Maria Jujol.

Carrer Casp, 48. Barcelona

The Casa Calvet was built by the children of textile manufacturer Pere Màrtir Calvet, who set up the business founded by their father in the basement and ground floor, while the first floor was used as the proprietors` home and the upper floors were rented out. This block of dwellings constitutes one of Gaudí’s least bold works, with a symmetrical façade that recalls a modest early Modernisme construction. Only careful attention to the details reveals the architect’s brilliant hand. Of particular interest is the entrance, flanked by columns in the shape of bobbins and an original wrought iron door knocker: a cross that comes down on a bug, symbol of the faith that destroys sin. Over the main door is the colourful first-floor gallery, with sculptural representations of flowers and mushrooms, a shield of Catalonia and references to hospitality (a cypress), peace (an olive branch) and abundance (two horns of plenty). A final point of interest is the façade’s cornice, with three busts of holy martyrs and two balconies of cast iron at the front, anticipating those at the Casa Batlló.
The interior of the building also has Baroque decoration, particularly in the entrance hall, but Gaudí’s main concern was the functional layout of the space. So for example, he placed the inner courtyard near the stairs to give it a better lookout. This was one of the things that the jury of the first annual competition for artistic buildings in Barcelona took into account when awarding their prize to the Casa Calvet in 1900.

Barcelona-Valls road. Sitges (El Garraf)

A group of two buildings on La Cuadra in El Garraf, an estate acquired by Eusebi Güell in 1872, where he produced wine for the ships of the Companyía Transatlàntica. Between 1905 and 1900, Antoni Gaudí and his assistant and disciple Francesc Berenguer i Mestres constructed one building for use as a winery (“cellers”) and another as a porter’s lodge. The stone and brick lodge abuts onto a parabolic arch which forms the entrance to the estate and also holds up the stairs to the guardroom. The iron grille on the gate resembles a fisherman’s net.
The other building, the winery itself, is one of the most fascinating of Gaudí’s creations. Made entirely of stone, it has a surprising triangular profile with the walls following the shape of the gable roof. Inside, above the basement winery are three floors: the first is a garage, the second accommodation for the administrator, and the top floor a chapel that opens on one side onto a terrace with sea views. The winery with its very expressive chimneys is linked by two parabolic bridges to the estate’s original mediaeval country house.

Carrer de la Cooperativa. Mataró

In his youth, between 1873 and 1885, Antoni Gaudí maintained a close personal and professional relationship with Salvador Pagès i Anglada, a textile industrialist whose views were close to Utopian Socialism and who had founded the Cooperativa Obrera Mataronense (Mataró workers’ cooperative) in 1864, first in Gràcia and from 1874 in Mataró. Gaudí collaborated enthusiastically in planning the cooperative’s premises, working with architect Emili Cabañes and engineer Joan Brunet. He was responsible for the general plan of the buildings and personally designed some, including two workmen’ cottages (built between 1878 and 1879), a social club (projected in 1878 but never built), a public lavatory and the textile bleaching factory.
Only the lavatory and factory have survived. The former is a small cylindrical building with a few ceramic motifs. The bleaching factory, built between 1882 and 1885, is a large simply finished space whose main interest lies its construction with Gaudí’s traditional parabolic arches, used here for the first time and created with wooden structures held together with pins.

Ciutadella Park. Barcelona

To pay for his architectural studies, Antoni Gaudí worked as a draughtsman with master builder Josep Fontserè i Mestre, whose family also came from Camp de Tarragona. Between 1873 and 1887 Fontserè directed works at the new Ciutadella Park in Barcelona where the 1888 Universal Exhibition was to be held, and others in the surrounding area including the construction of the Born Market.
Gaudí’s collaboration in Ciutadella Park was not limited to drawing up plans for Fontserè, he also made some contributions of his own. At the park’s monumental waterfall, built between 1875 and 1882, he designed the pavilions leading up to the terrace, the décor of the pool walls and the cave. He was also responsible in 1875 for the stone balustrade in the Placeta d’Aribau, ornamented with lions’ heads, and the following year, for the iron candelabra with the shield of Barcelona on the entrance railings. Gaudí also built the regulating basin of the large tank that stored water for the park, a complex project which he used to pass his degree subject ‘Strength of Materials’ without having to sit the examination.

Carrer de les Carolines 24. Barcelona

Casa Vicens was the first important commission received by Antoni Gaudí, just after he completed his degree in architecture. He was recommended by Manuel Vicens i Montaner, who wanted to build a summer residence on a plot owned by his family in the village of Gràcia, not yet assimilated into Barcelona. Gaudí presented the project in 1880 but work did not start until 1883 and went on to 1888.
Gaudí designed a four-floored house with a simple structure, still nowhere near the curved lines and architectural innovation of his later work, but interesting for its showy decoration, with fascinating spaces like the dining and smoking rooms. The explosion of colour in its ornamental details, greatly influenced by Arabic and eastern art, make Casa Vicens a clear precursor of the Modernista movement.
Casa Vicens originally abutted onto a convent on one side and a magnificent garden on the other. In 1925, after the convent had been demolished, architect Joan Baptista i Serra extended the house, carefully respecting the original work. The garden disappeared gradually over the years, with the loss of a monumental fountain with parabolic arch designed by Gaudí.

Carrers Mallorca, Marina, Provença and Sardenya. Barcelona

Gaudí’s best known work, now a symbol of Barcelona all over the world, is a sumptuous building to which the architect devoted more than half his life. He took over the works in late 1883 at the age of 31, replacing Francesc de Paula del Villar i Lozano of whose original project only part of the crypt had been built. When Gaudí died in 1926 he was still working on the site, and only the crypt and the apse, part of the cloister and the Nativity façade had been completed. Since then, the process of construction of the church has continued.
Gaudí radically transformed the original architect’s initial Neo Gothic project, conceiving a monumental church of gigantic and unheard-of dimensions. With its layout of space and profuse sculptural decoration it forms a veritable Bible in stone, a mystic poem that both professes and explains the Catholic faith. Once completed, the church will have five naves surrounded by an ambulatory cloister with an apse with seven chapels in the north, and three façades on the other sides: the Nativity, the Passion, and the main façade, the Glory. Each façade will include four bell towers with parabolic profile representing the twelve apostles, and on the apse and crossing, six more towers will symbolise the four evangelists, the Virgin Mary and Jesus. The tower of Jesus on the dome will be the highest, at 170 metres.
Beyond its whirlwind of symbolic and ornamental work, the Sagrada Familia also stands out as the work in which Gaudí combined all the architectural and structural discoveries of his career. With a modular grid floor plan, the church’s structure is supported by inclined pillars forked like the branches of a tree and covered by parabolic naves, an ideal combination for bearing the weight of the imposing construction.

District of Sobrellano. Comillas (Cantabria)

Near the Sobrellano Palace Gaudí planned a summer villa which became popularly known as El Capricho for Máximo Díaz de Quijano, a relative of the Marques of Comillas. The villa was built between 1883 and 1885, the works directed by architect Cristóbal Cascante i Colom while Gaudí supervised the whole process from Barcelona.
El Capricho is a relatively small three-floored building in which the layout of the rooms is adapted to fit the sloping site. Its Neo Mudejar appearance recalls Casa Vicens which Gaudí was building at the same time in Gràcia. Of particular interest is the chromatic play of the exterior, combining stone on the base with yellow and reddish brick walls and a glazed tile roof. The front entrance was sheltered by a porch with four columns whose capitals were decorated with flowers and doves, supporting a tower that resembles a Muslim minaret. The tower is clad with tiles representing green leaves and sunflowers, a motif which is repeated in bands running round the walls. The subtle decorative details with frequent allusions to music, one of the Díaz de Quijano’s passions, also stand out in the interior. For example, for the windows of the main first-floor lounge, Gaudí invented an ingenious system that produced the sound of bells when opened and closed.

Avinguda de Pedralbes, 15. Barcelona

In late 1883 Eusebi Güell added new land to the great estate that was his by inheritance, extending it as far as the former villages of Sarrià and Les Corts and turning it into a summer residence. The industrialist commissioned Gaudí to reform the family home and to build the estate’s boundary wall, including access gates and pavilions. This was the first cooperation of any scale between Güell and Gaudí, and was completed by the architect in 1887. The reform was lost between 1919 and 1924 when the house was converted into the new Royal Palace of Barcelona. Much of the estate’s wall also disappeared as the city expanded, encroaching on the former Güell estate. But in spite of new urban developments, three secondary gates remain, along with the magnificent main entrance, flanked by one pavilion in the form of a porter’s lodge and another for the stables and coach house
The Güell estate’s pavilions are minor masterworks in which Gaudí repeats the Neo Mudejar aesthetics of his youth but also introduces elements that would come to characterise his mature work like parabolic arches and vaults and hyperbolic domes. Among the most interesting ornamental aspects is the combined use on the exterior of brick, prefabricated cement panels and ceramic cladding. However, the most striking element is the wrought iron grille of the carriage entrance which represents one of the mythological passages of Atlàntida by poet Jacint Verdaguer, friend of Güell and Gaudí. This impressive grille reproduces Ladon, the mythological dragon who protected the golden oranges of the Garden of the Hesperides.

Carrer Nou de la Rambla, 3-5. Barcelona

The Palau Güell, completed when the architect was only 38, is the culmination of Gaudí’s youthful production, a work in which his total mastery of the use of architectural space became evident. Fascinated by the young architect, in 1885 Eusebi Güell commissioned him to build his residence in the centre of Barcelona, setting no limit on the cost. Gaudí responded with an exuberant, thoughtful work with an almost obsessive attention to detail.
Conceived as both as a home and for social gatherings, the Palau Güell is organised around a central lounge whose height extends up three floors and is covered with a parabolic dome that recalls the night sky. This imposing space served both as a concert room and for family prayers, thanks to an original cupboard that opened to reveal an altar. Around it Gaudí set out the rooms of the palace in a totally functional fashion, creating plays of perspective to give a feeling of spaciousness to a building that in fact occupies a relatively small plot.
As well as its central lounge, other striking features of the Palau Güell are the stables and roof terrace. The former are in the basement, where the exposed brick vaults and fungiform columns constitute an iconic landscape in the work of Gaudí. The aperture in the roof terrace, an exterior projection of the lounge, and the sculptural treatment of the twenty chimneys that surround it are precursors of ideas that the architect was to use later in the Casa Batlló and La Pedrera.

Carrer Sardenya and Carrer Provença. Barcelona

As the Sagrada Familia progressed, Gaudí used some of the land to put up some provisional auxiliary buildings, which although modest showed characteristic features of his work. The first to be completed in 1887 was the local chaplain’s house, a two-floored brick-built house with belfry. In 1906 the chaplain moved to a new building built beside the former, with a chapel upstairs and a trencadis anagram of the Sagrada Familia on the façade. Gaudí’s study was then set up in the vacant house where the architect came to live for the final months of his life. Over the years, annexes were gradually added to both buildings. In July 1936, during the anticlerical uprisings that marked the outbreak of the civil war, the study and the chaplain’s house were set on fire. Not only these constructions, but also the whole of Gaudí’s archive were destroyed including many plans and models of his projects.

Passeig Marítim. Barcelona

Claudi López i Bru, segundo marqués de Comillas y cuñado de Eusebi Güell, encargó a Antoni Gaudí el pabellón de la Compañía Transatlántica, el principal consorcio de barcos transoceánicos de España, para la Exposición Universal de Barcelona de 1888. A Gaudí no se le encargó un nuevo pabellón, sino adaptar y reformar uno de ya existente diseñado por Adolfo García Cabezas para la Exposición Naval de Cádiz de 1887. Con todo, la intervención del arquitecto fue tan importante que el pabellón resultante prácticamente era una obra nueva, con muchas referencias al arte nazarita. Gaudí añadió al pabellón cuatro torres con almenas, astas con gallardetes, persianas con celosías de madera y una entrada que imitaba el patio de los leones de la Alhambra de Granada.

Ubicado en la sección marítima de la Exposición Universal, el pabellón no se desmontó al clausurarse la misma y permaneció hasta muy entrado el siglo XX, cuando se derribó para construir el actual paseo Marítim de Barcelona.

Carrer de Ganduxer, 85-105. Barcelona

Early in 1889 Antoni Gaudí took charge of the works for the school and headquarters of the religious order of the Teresians in the village of Sant Gervasi de Casseroles, now part of Barcelona. Construction of the school had begun the previous year to the project of another architect, which was abandoned when only the foundations had been built. Gaudí respected the initial floor plan but changed the building’s appearance, transforming it into one of his most personal creations.
Unlike many of Gaudí’s works, the Teresian School used few resources in line both with the limited resources of the congregation and the nuns’ vows of poverty. Using cheap material wherever possible, Gaudí designed the school as an original Neo Gothic castle with a façade that combined boarding and brick. The aesthetics of the resulting building incorporate many religious symbols: anagrams of Jesus Christ, Carmelite shields, four-armed crosses on the corner towers, and mortar-boards on the battlements in reference to Saint Teresa. Gaudí’s traditional parabolic arches are present on the façade, in the windows and the access porch, the latter closed with an elegant wrought-iron grille. Arches are repeated inside the building, in the passages that run around the inner courtyard and the form one of the most atmospheric spaces of the architect’s work.

Plaça d’Eduardo Castro. Astorga (Castile-Leon)

After the old Episcopal Palace of Astorga burned down in December 1886, the bishop, Joan Baptista Grau, suggested to the ecclesiastical and ministerial authorities that his friend Antoni Gaudí should be asked to build the new palace. He presented his project in August 1887, but the works did not start until June 1889, after some objections and many bureaucratic obstacles. Gaudí visited Astorga a dozen times to supervise the work but basically directed it from Barcelona, where he was occupied on other projects. Annoyed by the constant obstacles raised by the authorities, the architect abandoned the work in November 1893, some weeks after the death of his friend Grau. The building was already almost complete apart from the roof, which was finished between 1907 and 1915 by another architect using a very different solution to Gaudí’s original plan.
The Neo Gothic style Episcopal Palace is built using granite from Bierzo to integrate it into its environment and not overshadow the nearby Astorga Cathedral. Its structure is highly conventional, built to a Greek cross floor plan with the ogival arches and cross vaults typical of Gothic architecture. In spite of this, some of its features reveal Gaudí’s originality: the arches in the entrance porch, the elongated chimneys in the shape of minarets, the pit which brings more light into the basement, and the treatment of the interior, recalling the Palau Güell.

Plaça de San Marcelo. Leon (Castile-Leon)

In 1891 businessmen Simón Fernández and Mariano Andrés commissioned Antoni Gaudí to build the new headquarters of the Fernández y Andrés company in Leon. This banking business was also engaged in the sale of textiles whose buyers included Eusebi Güell, who recommended the architect. Gaudí presented the project in December 1891 and it was started immediately, built in record time and completed in November 1892. The new building soon received the popular name of Casa Botines, in memory of Joan Homs Botinàs, the Catalan businessman established in León, founder of the company which later became Fernández y Andrés.
Like the Episcopal Palace in Astorga, the third and last of Gaudí’s works outside Catalonia was a personal interpretation of the Gothic adapted to suit its environment. The façades were built with rusticated limestone that echoes Gothic Renaissance architecture, a style well represented in Leon, and the roof and four cylindrical towers are of slate, an ideal material for areas with snow and that Gaudí only used in this project. Inside, the ground floor with its wrought-iron pillars provided an open space adaptable to the changing needs of a space used for storage and offices. The same innovative system was applied by Gaudí applied years later in La Pedrera.