Casa Milà

A hulking, delirious beauty (Robert Hughes - The Guardian)

Not all great buildings change the trajectory of other architecture. There are certain masterpieces which don’t seem to have any perceptible effect on the way that other buildings are designed and created, and yet despite that they remain unquestionable masterpieces, structures of such peculiar originality that they seem to expand the previously assumed limits of the builder’s art. Almost all the designs of Antoni Gaudí are of this sort - but none more clearly so than the Casa Milà.

Great Modern Buildings - excellent photos

“La Pedrera—’the quarry’—was the name an astounded population gave to this completely unique building. It could be compared with the steep cliff walls in which African tribes build their cave-like dwellings. The wavy facade, with its large pores, reminds one also of an undulating beach of fine sand, formed, for example, by a receding dune. The honeycombs made by industrious bees might also spring to the mind of the observer viewing the snake-like ups-and-downs that run through the whole bulding. In this last secular building which he constructed before devoting all his energies to the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi created a paradox: an artificial but natural building which was simultaneously a summary of all the forms that he has since become famous for. The roof sports an imitation of the bench from Guell Park as well as an ever more impressive series of bizarre chimney stacks.” — Rainer Zervst. Gaudi, 1852-1926, Antoni Gaudi i Cornet Ð A Life Devoted to Architecture. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH & Co. KG., 1988. p176.