The building is 1,323 m2 per floor on a plot of 1,620 m2. Gaudí made the first sketches in his workshop in the
Sagrada Família. He designed the house as a constant curve, both outside and inside, incorporating
ruled geometry and naturalistic elements. Casa Milà consists of two buildings, which are structured around two courtyards that provide light to the nine stories: basement, ground floor, mezzanine, main (or noble) floor, four upper floors, and an attic. The basement was intended to be the garage, the main floor the residence of the Milàs (a flat of all 1,323 m2), and the rest distributed over 20 apartments. The resulting layout is shaped like an asymmetrical "8" because of the different shapes and sizes of the courtyards. The attic housed the laundry and drying areas, forming an insulating space for the building and simultaneously determining the levels of the roof. One of the most notable elements of the building is the roof, crowned with skylights, staircase exits, fans, and chimneys. All of these elements, constructed out of brick covered with lime,
broken marble, or glass have a specific architectural function but are also real sculptures integrated into the building. The apartments feature plastered ceilings with dynamic reliefs, handcrafted wooden doors, windows, and furniture, as well as
hydraulic tiles and various ornamental elements. The stairways were intended as service entries, with the main access to the apartments by elevator except for the noble floor, where Gaudí added a prominent interior staircase. Gaudí wanted the people who lived in the flats to all know each other. Therefore, there were only elevators on every other floor, so people on different floors would meet one another.
Structure Casa Milà is characterized by its self-supporting stone facade, meaning that it is free of load-bearing walls. The facade connects to the internal structure of each floor by means of curved iron beams surrounding the perimeter of each floor. This construction system allows, on one hand, large openings in the facade which give light to the homes, and on the other, free structuring of the different levels, so that internal walls can be added and demolished without affecting the stability of the building. This allows the owners to change their minds at will and to modify, without problems, the interior layout of the homes.
Constructive and decorative items Facade The facade is composed of large blocks of
limestone from the
Garraf Massif on the first floor and from the
Villefranche quarry for the higher levels. The blocks were cut to follow the plot of the projection of the model, then raised to their location and adjusted to align in a continuous curve to the pieces around them. The windows of La Pedrera are an integral part of the overall facade design. Gaudí made sure that the windows were of varying sizes, designed to optimize the amount of natural light that could enter the building. Viewed from the outside the building has three parts: the main body of the six-storey blocks with winding stone floors, two floors set a block back with a different curve, similar to waves, a smoother texture and whiter color, and with small holes that look like
embrasures, and finally the body of the roof. Gaudí's original facade had some of its lower-level ironwork removed. In 1928, the tailor Mosella opened the first store in La Pedrera, and he eliminated the bars. This did not concern anyone, because in the middle of twentieth century, wrought ironwork had little importance. The ironwork was lost until a few years later, when Americans donated one of them to the
MoMa, where it is on display. With restoration initiatives launched in 1987, the facade was rejoined to some pieces of stone that had fallen. In order to respect the fidelity of the original, material was obtained from the Villefranche quarry, even though by then it was no longer operating.
Loft Like in
Casa Batlló, Gaudí shows the application of the
catenary arch as a support structure for the roof, a form which he had already used shortly after graduating in the wood frameworks of
Mataró's cooperative known as "L'Obrera Mataronense." In this case, Gaudí used the Catalan technique of
timbrel, imported from
Italy in the fourteenth century. The attic, where the laundry rooms were located, was a clear room under a
Catalan vault roof supported by 270
parabolic vaults of different heights and spaced by about 80 cm. The roof resembles both the ribs of a huge animal and a palm, giving the roof-deck a very unconventional shape similar to a landscape of hills and valleys. The shape and location of the courtyards makes the arches higher when the space is narrowed and lower when the space expands. The builder Bayó explained its construction: "First the face of a wide wall was filled with mortar and plastered. Then Canaleta indicated the opening of each arch and Bayó put a nail at each starting point of the arch at the top of the wall. From these nails was dangled a chain so that the lowest point coincided with the deflection of the arch. Then the profile displayed on the wall by the chain was drawn and on this profile the carpenter marked and placed the corresponding centering, and the timbrel vault was started with three rows of plane bricks. Gaudí wanted to add a longitudinal axis of bricks connecting all vaults at their keystones".
Roof and chimneys scarers) On the rooftop there are six skylights/staircase exits (four of which were covered with broken pottery and some that ended in a double cross typical of Gaudí), twenty-eight chimneys in several groupings, two half-hidden vents whose function is to renew the air in the building, and four domes that discharged to the facade. The staircases also house the water tanks; some of which are snail-shaped. The stepped roof of La Pedrera, called "the garden of warriors" by the poet
Pere Gimferrer because the chimneys appear to be protecting the skylights, has undergone a radical restoration, removing chimneys added in interventions after Gaudí, television antennas, and other elements that degraded the space. The restoration brought back the splendor to the chimneys and the skylights that were covered with fragments of
marble and broken Valencia tiles. One of the chimneys was topped with glass pieces – it was said that Gaudí did that the day after the inauguration of the building, taking advantage of the empty bottles from the party. It was restored with the bases of champagne bottles from the early twentieth century. The repair work has enabled the restoration of the original impact of the overhangs made of stone from
Ulldecona with fragments of tiles. This whole set is more colorful than the facade, although here the creamy tones are dominant.
Furniture Gaudí, as he had done in Casa Batlló, designed furniture specifically for the main floor. This was part of the concept artwork itself integral to
modernism in which the architect assumed responsibility for global issues such as the structure and the facade, as well as every detail of the decor, designing furniture and accessories such as lamps, planters, floors or ceilings. This was another point of friction with Segimon, who complained that there was no straight wall to place her Steinway piano. Gaudí's response was blunt: "So play the violin." The result of these disagreements has been the loss of the decorative legacy of Gaudí, as most of the furniture was removed due to climate change and the changes she made to the main floor when Gaudí died. Some remain in private collections, including a curtain made of
oak 4 m. long by 1.96 m. high in the Museum of Catalan Modernism; and a chair and desktop of Milà. Gaudí carved oak doors similar to what he had done for the Casa y Bardes, but these were only included on two floors as when Segimon discovered the price, she decided there would be no more at that quality. == Architecture ==