CASA MILA BY AR.ANTONI GAUDI

Architectural features related to building and ideologies of the architect .

1. CASA MILA - ANTONI GAUDI

2. CASA MILA , BARCELONA , SPAIN

3. ARCHITECT Antoni Gaudi was born on 25 th June 1852 in Resus , Catalonia , Spain. He studied Architecture in Barcelona , Spain at the Escola Tecnica Superior d’Arquitectura . In 1878 ,Gaudi officially became an Architect. Most of his works are located in Barcelona . During his lifetime , Gaudi worked in many styles . These included Orientalism , Neo – Gothic , Gothic Revival , Naturalism , and an Overarching Modernism . Gaudi disliked straight lines and angles because they don’t often appear naturally . Instead he based design on the swirling curves of nature. He was known for integrating ceramics , stained glass , wrought ironwork, and carpentry into his designs. You can see the characteristics of ART NOUVEAU in Gaudi’s work. The main work of Gaudi is the church of SAGRADA FAMILIA to which he devoted more than 40 years of his life and is still remains unfinished.

4. ANTONI GAUDI’S WORKS SAGRADA FAMILIA PARK GUELL

5. ANTONI GAUDI’S WORKS CASA MILA CASA BALTO

6. ABOUT THE BUILDING CASA MILA popularly known as LA PEDRERA or OPEN QUARRY , a reference to its unconvectional rough – hewn appearance , is a modernist building in Barcelona , Catalonia , Spain . It got the name open quarry due to unusual construction. It was the last private building designed by Architect Antoni Gaudi . It was built between 1906 and 1912 . In 1984 , it was declared a WORLD HERITAGE SITE by UNESCO .

7. OWNER’S OF CASA MILA PERE MILA CAMPS ROSER SEGIMON

8. OWNER’S OF CASA MILA Casa Mila was built for Roser Segimon and her husband Pere Mila. In September, they commissioned Gaudi for building them a new house with the idea of living in the main floor and renting out the rest of the apartments.  On February 2, 1906, the project was presented to the Barcelona City Council and the works began. The building was completed in December 1910 and the owner asked Gaudi to make a certificate to inhabit the main floor, which the City Council authorized in October 1911, and the couple moved in. 

9. PLAN OF CASA MILA

10. ELEVATION OF CASA MILA

11. SECTION

12. SECTION

13. VIEW OF CASA MILA

14. WHY WAS CASA MILA FAMOUS ? It  is probably one of the most famous buildings of the Catalan M odernism  or Catalan Art Nouveau period and one of the architect Antoni Gaudi’s most ambitious worksacade that conveys the rhythm of the interior. Casa Mila was built as two apartment blocks with independent entrances linked by two large inner courtyards and a sinuous common Casa Mila, popularly known as ‘La Pedrera ’. The building marked a break with the architectural language of Gaudi’s work in terms of innovation in both the functional aspects and the constructive and ornamental ones.

15. FACT’S ABOUT CASA MILA The Casa Mila was made in art nouveau style . It is a style of art and architecture which embraces vivid decorative shapes and prefers curves over straight lines . Casa Mila is one of the most fascinating buildings in the world. Casa Mila have  a spectacular roof . Gaudi designed the Casa Mila exclusively with  natural forms , in result not a single right angle can be found . The two halls are fully polychrome with  paintings oil on plaster surface , showing a repertoire eclectic references mythology and flowers . Areas open to the public are the  attic ,  rooftop  and  top floor . The top floor apartment gives visitors an idea of what the interior looked like at the start of the twentieth century . The main floor is the former residence of the Mila’s .  It was opened as an exhibition hall in 1992. 

16. FACT’S ABOUT CASA MILA On the roof stands chimneys and ventilation. There is also a level difference and several staircases on the roof, which makes it all look more like a landscape than a rooftop . Composed of  270 parabolic brick  arches of varying height, the spine-like rib structure creates a varied topography of  attic . Gaudi put lifts on every 2nd floor  because he wanted the people who lived in the flats to get to know each other, the idea was that the people on different floors should communicate with one another. The entire  facade  is made of natural stone, with white ceramic tiles around the upper edge of the building.

17. CHIMNEY’S ARCH

18. DESIGN OF CASA MILA The building is 1,323 m 2  per floor on a plot of 1,620 m 2 . Gaudi made the first sketches in his workshop in the  Sagrada Familia .  He designed the house as a constant curve, both outside and inside, incorporating  ruled geometry  and naturalistic elements. Casa Mila consists of two buildings, which are structured around two courtyards that provide light to the nine storeys: basement, ground floor, mezzanine, main (or noble) floor, four upper floors, and an attic. The basement was intended to be the garage, the main floor the residence of the Mila’s (a flat of all 1,323 m 2 ), and the rest distributed over 20 apartments. The resulting layout is shaped like an asymmetrical "8" because of the different shapes and sizes of the courtyards. 

19. DESIGN OF CASA MILA The attic housed the laundry and drying areas, forming an insulating space for the building and simultaneously determining the levels of the roof. One of the most notable elements of the building is the roof, crowned with skylights/ staircase exits, fans, and chimneys. All of these elements, constructed out of brick covered with lime,  broken marble, or glass  have a specific architectural function but are also real sculptures integrated into the building. The stairways were intended as service entries, with the main access to the apartments by elevator except for the noble floor, where Gaudi added a prominent interior staircase. Gaudi wanted the people who lived in the flats to know each other. Therefore, there were only elevators on every other floor, so people on different floors would meet one another.

20. STRUCTURE OF CASA MILA Casa Mila is characterized by its self-supporting stone facade, meaning that it is free of load-bearing walls.  The facade connects to the internal structure of each floor by means of curved iron beams surrounding the perimeter of each floor. This construction system allows, on one hand, large openings in the facade which give light to the homes, and on the other, free structuring of the different levels, so that internal walls can be added and demolished without affecting the stability of the building.  This allows the owners to change their minds at will and to modify, without problems, the interior layout of the homes.

21. FACADE OF BUILDING The large stone slabs of the facade were attached first and then worked on by the stonemasons . The front of the house looks like a massive rock, broken only by wavy lines and iron ornaments . The bright stone and the otherwise colourless facade of this building distinguishes it from Gaudi's  other works and looks very expressionistic . The house consists of two components, which are connected only by the facade, the ground floor and the roof. Each has its own yard and entrance .  

22. FACADE OF BUILDING  It stands in contrast to Casa Batlo , with its colourful and playful facade . Gaudi deliberately focused on the design of the building, used very little paint and left the materials natural . The curved facade is a unique example of organic architecture . Gaudi's original facade had some of its lower-level ironwork removed.

23. FACADE The facade is composed of large blocks of  limestone  from the  Garraf Massif  on the first floor and from the  Ville franche  quarry for the higher levels.  The blocks were cut to follow the plot of the projection of the model, then raised to their location and adjusted to align in a continuous curve to the pieces around them. Viewed from the outside the building has three parts: the main body of the six-storey blocks with winding stone floors, two floors set a block back with a different curve, similar to waves, a smoother texture and whiter colour, and with small holes that look like  embrasures , and finally the body of the roof.

24. FACADE In 1928, the tailor Mosella opened the first store in La Pedrera , and he eliminated the bars. The ironwork was lost until a few years later, when Americans donated one of them to the  MoMa , where it is on display.  This did not concern anyone, because in the middle of twentieth century, wrought ironwork had little importance With restoration initiatives launched in 1987, the facade was rejoined to some pieces of stone that had fallen. In order to respect the fidelity of the original, material was obtained from the Ville franche quarry , even though by then it was no longer operating.

25. FACADE

26. FACADE

27. HALL AND COURTYARD’S The building uses a completely original solution to solve the issue of a lobby being too closed and dark. Its open and airy courtyards provide a place of transit and are directly visible to those accessing the building. There are two patios on the side of the Passeig de Gracia and of the street Provence. Patios, structurally, are key as supporting loads of interior facades.  The floor of the courtyard is supported by pillars of  cast iron .

28. HALL AND COURTYARDS   In the courtyard, there are traditional elliptical beams and girders but Gaudi applied an ingenious solution of using two concentric cylindrical beams with stretched radial beams, like the spokes of a bicycle.  They form a point outside of the beam to two points above and below, making the function of the central girder a  keystone  and working in tension and compression simultaneously. This supported structure is twelve feet in diameter and is considered "the soul of the building" with a clear resemblance to Gothic crypts.   The centrepiece was built in a shipyard by  Josep Maria Carandell  who copied a steering wheel, interpreting Gaudi’s intent as to represent the helm of the ship of life.  

29. HALL

30. HALL

31. COURTYARD

32. COURTYARD

33. INTERIOR GATE Access is protected by a massive  iron  gate with a design attributed to Jujol . It was originally used by both people and cars, as access to the garage is in the basement, now an  auditorium . The two halls are fully polychrome with oil  paintings  on the plaster surfaces, with  eclectic  references to  mythology  and flowers. During construction there was a problem including a basement as a garage for cars, the new invention that was thrilling the bourgeois at the time.

34. INTERIOR GATE Gaudi agreed to remove a pillar on the ramp that led into the garage so that Felix, who was establishing sales and factory in  Walls of Valles , could go to both places with his car from La Pedrera . For the floors of Casa Mila, Gaudi used a model of  floor  forms of square timbers with two colours, and the  hydraulic pavement  hexagonal pieces of blue and sea motifs that had originally been designed for the Batlo house.

35. INTERIOR GATE

36. LOFT Like in Casa Batlo , Gaudi shows the application of the  catenary arch  as a support structure for the roof, a form which he had already used shortly after graduating in the wood frameworks of  Mataro's co-operative known as L'Obrera Mataronense . The attic, where the laundry rooms were located, was a clear room under a  Catalan vault  roof supported by 270  parabolic vaults  of different heights and spaced by about 80 cm. The roof resembles both the ribs of a huge animal and a palm, giving the roof-deck a very unconventional shape similar to a landscape of hills and valleys.

37. LOFT The shape and location of the courtyards makes the arches higher when the space is narrowed and lower ,when the space expands. First the face of a wide wall was filled with mortar and plastered.   Canaleta  indicated the opening of each arch and Bay put a nail at each starting point of the arch at the top of the wall.  From these nails was dangled a chain so that the lowest point coincided with the deflection of the arch.   Gaudi wanted to add a longitudinal axis of bricks connecting all vaults at their keystone.

38. LOFT

39. LOFT

40. ROOF’S AND CHIMNEY’S The work of Gaudi on the roof top of La Pedrera brought his experience at  Palau Guell  together with solutions that were clearly more innovative – this time creating shapes and volumes with more body, more prominence, and less polychromasia .  On the rooftop there are six skylights/staircase exits (four of which were covered with broken pottery and some that ended in a double cross typical of Gaudi). Twenty-eight chimneys in several groupings, two half-hidden vents whose function is to renew the air in the building, and four domes that discharged to the facade. The staircases also house the water tanks; some of which are snail-shaped.

41. ROOF’S AND CHIMNEY’S The stepped roof of La Pedrera , called "the garden of warriors" by the poet  Pere Gimferrer   because the chimneys appear to be protecting the skylights, has undergone a radical restoration, removing chimneys added in interventions after Gaudi , television antennas, and other elements that degraded the space.  The restoration brought back the splendour to the chimneys and the skylights that were covered with fragments of  marble  and broken  Valencia tiles . One of the chimneys was topped with glass pieces – it was said that Gaudi did that the day after the inauguration of the building, taking advantage of the empty bottles from the party.  It was restored with the bases of champagne bottles from the early twentieth century.

42. ROOF

43. ROOF

44. CHIMNEY’S

45. CHIMNEY’S

46. FURNITURE’S Gaudi , as he had done in Casa Batlo ; designed furniture specifically for the main floor. This was part of the concept artwork itself integral to  modernism  in which the architect assumed responsibility for global issues such as the structure and the facade, as well as every detail of the decor, designing furniture and accessories such as lamps, planters, floors or ceilings. This was another point of friction with Segimon , who complained that there was no straight wall to place her Steinway piano. The result of these disagreements has been the loss of the decorative legacy of Gaudi , as most of the furniture was removed due to climate change and the changes she made to the main floor when Gaudi died. 

47. FURNITURE’S Some remain in private collections, including a curtain made of  oak  4 m. long by 1.96 m. high in the Museum of Catalan Modernism; and a chair and desktop of Mila . Gaudi carved oak doors similar to what he had done for the Casa y Bardes , but these were only included on two floors as when Segimon discovered the price, she decided there would be no more at that quality.

48. FURNITURE’S

49. FURNITURE’S

50. FURNITURE’S

51. RESTORATION / RENOVATION Gaudi's work was designated a historic and artistic  monument  on July 24, 1969.  Casa Mila was in poor condition in the early 1980s.  It had been painted a dreary brown and many of its interior colour schemes had been abandoned or allowed to deteriorate, but it has been restored since and many of the original colours revived. In 1984 the building became part of a  World Heritage Site  encompassing some of Gaudi's works.  The Barcelonan city council tried to rent the main floor as an office for the  1992 Olympic  bid.   On February 19, 1987, urgently needed work began on the restoration and cleaning of the facade. The work was done by the architects Joseph Emilio Hernandez-Cross and Rafael Vila. The renovated main floor opened in 1990 as part of the  Cultural Olympiad  of Barcelona. The floor became an exhibition room with an example of  modernism  in the  Eixample .

52. RESTORATION / RENOVATION

53. ATRIUM AT DUSK AFTER RESTORATION

54. ISSUES  In December 1907 the  City Hall  stopped work on the building because of a pillar which occupied part of the sidewalk, not respecting the alignment of facades.  Again on August 17, 1908, more problems occurred when the building surpassed the predicted height and borders of its construction site by 4,000 square metres (43,000 sq ft). The Council called for a fine of 100,000  pesetas  (approximately 25% of the cost of work) or for the demolition of the attic and roof.  The dispute was resolved a year and a half later, December 28, 1909, when the Commission certified that it was a monumental building and thus not required to have a 'strict compliance' with the bylaws.

55. ARCH ON ROOF

56. MAIN GATE

57. GLASS TOWER ON ROOF

58. STAIRCASE AT CASA MILA

59. BALCONY AT CASA MILA

60. ATRIUM

61. MURAL AT CASA MILA

62. BEDROOM’S IN CASA MILA

63. AUDITORIUM

64. KITCHEN

65. BATHROOM

66. DINING

67. INTERIOR

68. PASSAGE

69. PILLAR’S

70. WINDOW’S

71. USE OF STAINED GLASS

72. CASA MILA

73. THANK YOU