March 10: Casa Batlló

Casa Batlló was designed and built by Spanish genius designer Antoni Gaudí between 1904 and 1906. Casa Batlló has become the dreamy work of all of Gaudi’s buildings with its fantastic shape and rich colors. It is an underwater world. However, Gaudi did not draw any construction drawings when designing the reconstruction of the building. The entire scheme was limited to a sketch and a plaster model made by Gaudi himself. Gaudi’s creation, mostly based on models, did not have detailed floor plans and construction drawings for each floor.

The most impressive design of Casa Batlló is the tile collage—the collage of glass shards and porcelain shards, which reminds us that this is a place where light, shadow, and color combinations. The courtyard facade of Casa Batlló has several flower beds embedded in the wall, they are made of ceramic and broken tile collage patterns, which are also designed by Gaudi. But the biggest surprise is at the highest point of the facade, where Gaudi lets his imagination run free and the platforms he designed are transformed into an unbridled expression of colors and geometric and botanical patterns, with a kaleidoscopic effect created by the application of circular designs and colored tile collages.

In addition, the most striking feature of Casa Batlló’s modern doctrinal reform, as seen along the tour route, is the extension of the lightwell, which Gaudi designed as the building’s facade. This resembles a waterfall, with daylight reflecting between the painted tiles, entering through all the gaps and spilling down into the skylights of the rooms. I saw the color change from white to pearl gray, from pearl gray to sky blue, and finally to navy and cobalt blue. The color of these tiles covering the patio walls gradually darkens as they rise in height, because the higher you go, the stronger the daylight. With this design, Gaudi succeeded in balancing the distribution of color and light in the light well.

Casa Batlló is the most complete work of Gaudi’s design maturity, without any budgetary problems, and all of Gaudi’s ideas were realized. At the same time, Casa Batlló is also Gaudi’s most creatively passionate work.

Author: Jingxue Hu