Casa Batlló, The Triumph of Virtues

Comparing the Casa Batlló building designed by Antoni Gaudí with the cellular tissues in an organism can provide us with a harmonized and premeditated setting between the human residence and its natural surroundings.

The building is located in Passeig de Gràcia, a magnificent boulevard in the centre of Barcelona and one of the most prestigious avenues of Spain. This area includes luxurious shopping and business buildings and the headquarters of the big banking institutions.

Gaudi was the leading architect of the emerged Modernisme in Catalonia, Spain, who used floral and organic forms in his architectural designs. He integrated the applied art of stained glass, wrought iron, ceramics and carpentry into his building designs.

The ground floor’s façade consists of five sandstone columns framed four arches of the building entrance. On the first floor, the six fine sculptural columns support the organic shaped curvy stone facade and the stained, glazed oval openings behind them.

The undulating wave-formed facade on the first floor is reminiscent of the Montjuïc sight, a broad, shallow hill in Barcelona with an impressive fine view over the harbour.

The unique upper floor’s façade has used the famous Catalan modernist method of cemented tile mosaics, including tile shards and broken chinaware, the Trencadís. Gaudi created natural forms of water lilies with polychrome pottery tiles on a wavy building surface that evokes the brightness of the lake’s luminous reflection.