Casa Batlló: façade

Gaud� worked on two major urban residential buildings in parallel with the Parc G�ell: the Casa Batll� (1904-06) and the Casa Milà (1906-10), both in the Passeig de Gracia, Barcelona. The Casa Batll� reveals Gaud�’s confidence and skill in remodelling an existing building. He added a floor to the original Neo-classical five-storey townhouse and clothed ground and first floors in stone in fantastic, fluid lines like an eroded outcrop of rock. This curvilinear stonework conceals the original rectangular windows within mask-like openings, which are echoed in the iron balustrades of the balconies above.

The higher levels of the redesigned fa�ade are covered in an abstract tile mosaic, and the whole undulates upwards to a parapet that is like a wave crest and changes colour from end to end. The roof curves in three dimensions and is covered with green ceramic tiles like the scales of a great sea monster. On the fifth floor, there is also a tiny roof-garden from which a circular turret rises to break through the parapet.

Inside the house, the curved forms of the stairway and its path up through the building in its skylit, blue-and-white ceramic-tiled stair-well add to the dynamic analogy.