Barcelona Restoration: Gaudí’s Casa Vicens

WORDS Mary Garner IMAGES Pol Viladoms

Iconic architect Antoni Gaudí’s first residential project in Barcelona has undergone a major restoration and is now open to the public.

The house, known as Casa Vicens, was built between 1883 and 1885 and designed as a summer house for Manuel Vicens i Montaner, a stock and currency broker. It was the first project designed and built by Gaudí, and according to the team at Casa Vicens, “his own idea of a single-family home, as a single unit and whole, where construction and ornamentation are integrated in such a way that one cannot be understood without the other.”

In 2014, the UNESCO World Heritage Site was bought by a family-owned Spanish bank, MoraBanc of Andorra. Working with Studio DAW they’ve spent about R68 million converting it into a museum and cultural centre.

For more information, visit casavicens.org.

(h/t) designboom.com