Casa Vicens, the first house designed by Antoni Gaudí in 1888, is in the midst of a renovation in order to be converted into a museum-house. The building, which has been on Unesco’s world heritage list since 1984, is due to open to the public for the first time in autumn 2016.
The Andorran bank MoraBanc acquired Casa Vicens in March 2014, with the aim of making the building accessible to the public, La Vanguardia reports. Gaudí’s first house is “an essential work for understanding his unique architectural language and the development of Modernism in Barcelona”, says Mercedes Mora, the executive director of the museum whose family runs MoraBanc.
In 1878, Antoni Gaudí was commissioned to build the house by Manuel Vicens i Montaner, the owner of a ceramics factory. The architect designed Casa Vicens as a cohesive project, treating the garden, the façade and the interior as one artistic work, with all the elements united by a noticeable Arab influence and vibrant tile work. From 1899 to 2014, it belonged to the Herrero-Jover family, who acquired it from Vicens’s widow and used it as their primary home. The third generation put it up for sale in 2007 for €35m. The asking price dropped as months passed without a buyer, and eventually the MoraBanc acquired the house for a sum that has remained undisclosed.
Despite the restoration, the museum-house will not completely follow Gaudi’s original design. Some of the Casa Vicens’s decorations were irreversibly removed or modified over the years, and many large parcels of land around the house that were once a garden were sold, with new buildings constructed on the property.
