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Walking along the attractive Diagonal avenue in Barcelona, specifically at number 332, we discover, if we look closely, one of the many architectural jewels of Catalan modernism that there are in Barcelona. Here the ingenuity, mastery and skill of design is reflected once again, represented this time by the architect Josep Maria Jujol i Gibert.
We are talking about the Planells House, the protagonist today in La Vanguardia's Readers' Photos. It was built between 1923 and 1924. It is undoubtedly the Barcelona project par excellence in the work of Josep Maria Jujol, due to its unique and innovative characteristics, with a location in a block laid out according to Pla Cerdà, with a trapezoid-shaped plot, due to its contact with Diagonal, in the heart of Eixample, and its small surface area.
Josep María Jujol i Gibert (Tarragona, September 16, 1879 - Barcelona, May 1, 1949), was a unique Catalan modernist architect. He was born on September 16, 1879 in the house at number 6 Plaza de Prim and was baptized two days later in the church of San Juan Bautista, with the names of Josep María, Andreu i Ignasi.
Son of a national teacher, he studied his first letters at his father's school. In 1888 the family moved to the then town of Gracia, which is now part of Barcelona, and for two years he attended classes at the Public School of Drawing in order to practice his uncontrollable desire to draw. At the age of 12 he began high school, which he finished in 1896, the year in which he began previous studies in Architecture at the Faculty of Sciences, entering the School of Architecture in 1901.
He worked in the studio of Professor Antonio Gallissà Soqué and, when he died in 1903, he worked with the architect José Font i Gumà, both collaborators of Luis Domènech i Montaner, all three very aficionados and scholars of glazed ceramics.
On May 18, 1906, he received the title of architect while collaborating with Domènech and Font Gumà in the reform works of the Barcelona Athenaeum. At this point he entered into a relationship with Antonio Gaudí, whom he helped with works such as Casa Milà, the restoration of the sea of Mallorca and the Sagrada Familia. His own professional work began in 1907 with the Fernando Heras house in Calle Tapioles in Barcelona.
In 1909 he designed the theater of the Patronato Obrero of Tarragona, recently restored, a work of great courage and brilliant chromaticism, as was always usual in his style. Also in 1909 he built the very unique San Salvador house on the Paseo de la Mare de Déu del Coll, in Barcelona, with interesting structural applications of exposed brick and wrought iron.
In 1910 he polychromed the model of the façade of the Nativity of the Sagrada Familia, which appeared in the Gaudí exhibition in Paris. Between 1910 and 1914 he made frequent trips to Palma de Mallorca, collaborating with Gaudí on the works of the cathedral, such as the paintings of the choir, the ceramics of the presbytery and the wrought iron of the episcopal chair.
José María Jujol married Teresa Gibert Mosella in 1927, after a long courtship. The couple always remained united and raised their children in the Catholic religion, which Jujol felt deeply, especially devotion to the Virgin Mary.
The last work of Jujol, in 1949, was the agency of the Caja de Ahorros Provincial, demolished in 1962.
This artist, apart from being an architect, was above all a draftsman who captured and created all types of objects and complementary elements, such as furniture, lights or elevators and especially a watercolorist of great beauty and color, generally labeled with a very complicated Gothic letter, painted with glitter, a material that he frequently used and that the students called "jujolina."
As a sculptor, in his works he always prioritized the decorative complement over the structural one. He was also a great promoter of the use of reusable elements, such as glass bottles, fragments of marble, wrought iron, brass or wood.
He is attributed as the creator of the trencadís technique (it is a type of ornamental application of mosaic made from ceramic fragments, basically tiles), joined with mortar (it is a type of mortar used as a construction material in masonry); very common and characteristic in Catalan modernist architecture.
The contractor Evelí Planell commissioned Jujol to build the Casa Planells, on a plot of 240 m2, which would eventually grow to 83 m2, located at the corner of the intersection between Av. Diagonal and Calle Sicilia, in a trapezoidal block.
Apparently, since 1914, Jujol and Planell had developed a very close professional and friendly relationship, which led to their commissions for houses and other projects.
Thus he commissioned Jujol to build the Planells House. He was forced to carry out this project. Apart from the first project, two new ones, due to the different changes in relation to the initial one due to the economic difficulties that Planells was going through. The change of use, the reduction of the dimensions of the lot, greater height, a warehouse or commercial premises on the ground floor, a mezzanine...
The first project is dated December 31, 1922. It consisted of a house in which a single family occupied the entire building, with a garden. It was intended for a doctor, so the order asked to include the necessary rooms for an office.
The lot could be said to be a square reduced on two of its sides. The first thing that catches your attention about this first project is the dimensions of the lot. The front towards Diagonal is 20.18 meters; and towards Sicilia Street, 18.75 meters. We are talking about a plot of more than 240 m2. This surface was what the site had in the first instance.
The second project was developed during the month of August 1923, and consisted of a building with two homes: a façade, eight floors and an interior perspective.
To these two homes, Jujol adds an attic. One of the homes would be destined for the same owner of the lot, the contractor Evelí Planells, while the other could be rented or for a relative of Planells himself.
Between the first and second projects, Planells sells more than half of the land, believed to be for economic reasons.
This change in dimension on the site produces a radical change in terms of Josep Jujol's design approach.
Between the second and third project there are no changes to the plot (83 m2), but it does happen that Planells completely changes its approach. He asks to solve a taller building intended mainly for rental housing that at the same time would be compatible with his client and friend's own residence. Surely Planells' financial hardships make him give up on the previous project intended mainly for him and his family.
To make the site profitable, he asked Jujol to divide the building into six floors with various uses: a warehouse or commercial premises on the ground floor, a mezzanine to rent as a home (although later used as an office by Planells himself), a main floor of larger size that continues to be the home of the Planells family, and above it, three smaller apartments for rent.
Jujol thus began a third approach to this terrain during the month of October of the same year (1923). From the space initially planned to be developed, it was reduced to almost a third of the original surface, covering the entire corner of Diagonal and Sicilia. The front towards Diagonal goes from being 20.18 meters long to being 10.55 meters long. While the front towards Sicilia Street decreases its length by 6 meters, remaining 12.75 meters.
This fact is important not only because of the difference in size with respect to the plot that remains to carry out the following projects, but also because of its geometry and proportion.
The drawing that undoubtedly marks the beginning of this third project is, as in the previous one, a facade. The initial idea that Jujol had for this six-story building is captured in these lines.
The fact that Jujol has the habit of starting a project from the facade is symptomatic. His first view of the project is usually an elevation. Both the development of the floors and the structural solution seem to be a function of what is wanted to be represented through the façade.
The importance given to the surface, like a set whose interior has to be resolved a posteriori, is more than evident here. What Jujol is looking for in these cases is the building as an image, as a representation of an idea.
It seems that Jujol managed to achieve his three objectives:
This is probably Jujol's most conventional project in terms of way of designing, where the main solutions are given in the plan and the façade.
Jujol begins his projects with a first impression with the idea of achieving a façade as a representation of something and it seems that on this occasion he has achieved it again.
Jujol managed to finish the building up to the second floor – he lacked the attic and finished with the finishing touches, because that was where the money ran out. Planells stopped paying for materials and the architect himself and he finally disengaged from the project.
It was an anonymous architect who completed the Planells House, who preserved his work by not degrading the building, something truly very difficult.
The façade is reduced to its minimum expression: glass, windows with half-expressionist orders capable of saying it all, wrought iron railings, plastered brick spaces. The sgraffito and complicated locksmithing disappear, without finishing touches that could fall, the house survives with little maintenance, reduced to the essentials.
Planells sold the property and the new owner, although he respected the intentions conveyed, built two more apartments with totally different finishes. The two upper floors, although they maintained the circular balcony, have square windows and rectilinear finishes that clash with the fluidity of lines of the rest of the building.
The rectangle that appears black in the original floor mosaics corresponds to the mark left with the removal of the bidets that the new owner installed in the rooms of Casa Planells.
The new owner decided to set up a luxury brothel and installed bidets in all the rooms. In fact, Casa Planells was known by the nickname "la casa del Bisbe", (house of the bishop), according to double-edged tongues, due to the regular visits made by a certain bishop, who had become the neighborhood talk.
The building passed from owners and tenants from one hand to another, with the consequent abandonment and deterioration of the facilities, until Arturo Frediani, Catalan architect, FAD Prize for Architecture, Promotion of Arts and Design, found the house in a deplorable state under years of apathy and abandonment.
Frediani came ready to rehabilitate this work of art. It was found that someone had decided to cover the delicate plaster work with gotelé, plant a floor over the beautiful original mosaics, cover the vents on the façade, place the cables in the wall... a real disaster.
From his experience as a tenant, Frediani said that "sitting in front of the computer screen, having a coffee or drawing, the experience of the urban landscape is total. What comes closest to the 300° panorama from the gallery is the experience of the slow take-off of a hot air balloon".
After so much effort, and once they had settled in the main one, they realized that the metal structure of the balconies and the grandstand had practically appeared rusted. The property immediately had to be shored up and rehabilitation began that ended in 2012.
The house has been saved but the rehabilitation did not allow for the recovery of original elements such as the wood or the book blinds and the façade aerators, which served to regulate the temperature, in a simple and ecological way, in rooms with more glass than floor. . The original color of the facade was not used either.
Currently, the building is inhabited on the mezzanine and main floor by the company MT Agencia de Speakers and the rest by private homes.
We appear at the main door of Casa Planells, press the bell on the main floor and Mercè appears. We asked her if she would let us in to take some photographs of the apartment inside in order to be able to make this photographic report for the La Vanguardia Readers Network. She discusses it with her boss. The wait is very short and takes us to Pablo Ayguavives, director of MT Agencia de Speakers, who has not only allowed us to discover the building from the inside, but, with his knowledge about the history of the property, has provided us with information that we didn't know
The house inside exceeds my best expectations, it is spectacular. It is made with even the smallest detail in mind to facilitate coexistence, where you can breathe a relaxing atmosphere, full of light and joy, with accessories that make you feel in another world, even having the feeling when you leave that you have woken up. of a fantastic dream.
I recommend that if you like architecture, that you go to Avenida Diagonal, 332, where you will find the horizontal expression of a fantastic architecture as a whole, which when contemplating it makes us feel good with its singularities, the history and the author of the work. And if you can visit it inside, you will have achieved something difficult to do. For this reason, I would like to thank Paula, Elisabet, Nerea and Pablo, from MT Agencia de Speakers, for their kindness and hospitality, for allowing me to enter their house without knowing me at all. Thank you so much.
