A summer residence that Manuel Vicens Montaner commissioned to Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, the Casa Vicens was built between 1883 and 1885 in the Gràcia district of Barcelona. In 1925, architect Joan Baptista Serra de Martínez created the first extension of the property. The house remained in private hands until 2014, when the Andorran group MoraBanc acquired it in order to convert it into a museum. In 2017, two Barcelona-based firms, Martínez Lapeña-Torres Arquitectos and Daw Office, have been entrusted with the task of restoring the house, which had been poorly restructured in 1965. “A surgical operation”, according to the architects.

This article was published in AA’s 429th issue – Ornament – available on our online store.

 

 

The work conducted in 1965 aimed to convert the house which was originally intended for a single family into a residence housing more than one family. During the renovation, the decision was made to demolish these additions in order to restore the original aspect of Gaudí’s work. The ceramic elements on the façade were replaced with new pieces. The porch was redesigned as closely as possible to its original appearance and the front door designed by Gaudí was put back in its initial position.

 

 

 

The dining room, to the left of the picture below, was covered with plant motifs in sgraffito, an Italian technique which superimposes several layers of coloured plaster which are then scratched through to underlying layers. To the right, the smoking room, designed in a Mozarabic style, has a ceiling covered with muqarnas and walls with tiles of embossed papier-mâché. The new staircase designed by the architects provides access to the upper floors and the exhibition rooms.

 

 

 

 

 

The Casa Vicens boasts the first roof terrace designed by Gaudí. For the architects, this restoration was “an interior reconciliation project, a dialogue between two forms of architecture created forty years apart”.

 

 

 

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Architects: Martínez Lapeña-Torres Arquitectos and Daw Office
Client: MoraBanc
Completion: 2017
Budget: 3.800.000 €

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