Gaudí

Some day I may get to Barcelona to see the many works of psychadelic architect Antoni Gaudí, but for now, I have to settle for one small, strange house tucked away on the northern coast.

It was rainy so if you want beautiful photos, you can search “El Capricho”, though that wasn’t what Gaudí named the residence, (a caprice of architecture).

It’s covered with sunflowers and vines in a trippy way, but the interior really shows what the house was about. The sunflower is a metaphor for following the sun, and many designers of homes have followed this aim… to open the interior to as much light as possible.

It’s impossible to photograph art under glass in such a place, but the studies are interesting, exploring the flow of heat thru the space. And the mechanics of his shutter designs and weighted window sashes.

So, visually it’s nearly impossible to draw connections between Gaudí and Frank Lloyd Wright here, but both professed that nature was the center of everything. And both men designed furniture, though I think only Gaudí constructed his own. I know which man’s designs I’d prefer to sit in!

These ironwork benches are elaborate but I thought it interesting that they face into the house, not out to the garden. Why?

There is definitely a love of nature in many places (and the owner’s love of music), inside and outside.