With neighbors as famous as La Pedrera, Casa Batlló or La Amatller, tourists do not crowd in front of number 96 Passeig de Gràcia. And yet, the Casas-Carbó residence, designed in 1898 -yes, the year of the end of the empire that so influenced thought and creation in 20th century Spain-, treasures a more than remarkable modernist heritage accessible to anyone who cross its doors. This ground floor and four-story building that saw the growth of the great boulevard that we now know witnessed the cultural and commercial evolution of Barcelona and has always been closely linked to art and design.
The building, the work of architect Antoni Rovira i Rabassa -son of also architect Antoni Rovira i Trias-, today houses the largest (and most beautiful) Massimo Dutti store in the country. But before that it sheltered the creative passion of the modernist painter, Ramón Casas. His crony Santiago Rusiñol also lived in the building, which was so close to the Olímpic, the bar he went to every afternoon and which was later called La Punyalada. After the two friends painted and ran around, the main floor was used as a workshop and parade hall by the couturier Asunción Bastida, a pioneer of Spanish haute couture. And on the ground floor it housed the Utrillo lithography workshop.
Ramón Casas' father bought this property and the neighboring one, the Codina house, from the Ferrer family in 1892. After his death, the painter and his mother, Elisa Carbó, stayed there to live. The artist, who was 32 years old, set up his workshop in the interior garden of the property. In 1912 it was his mother who died and Casas decided that he was going to follow his heart without caring about the gossip and moved to the neighborhood of Sant Gervasi de Cassoles with his lover and model, Júlia Peraire, with whom he met. married ten years later.
In 1926, fashion joined art when Asunción Bastida opened her sewing house on the main floor. The dressmaker belonged to the select group of the so-called “big five” of the Haute Couture Cooperative, founded by Pedro Rodríguez in 1940 and of which Santa Eulalia, El Dique Flotante and Manuel Pertegaz were part. The author of the Lola Flores wedding dress, who also introduced the use of cotton in Spain for the beach and for party dresses, and sports boutiques, had official authorization from Christian Dior to reproduce her models and sign them with the French brand. Her creations, with straight, simple and unadorned lines, that marked the female figure, are represented in the Antoni de Montpalau Textile Collection and in the fashion collection of the Barcelona Design Museum, which preserves her archive.
In 1941, the German Hugo Vinçon and his brother-in-law Enrique Levi set their sights on the building to open their gift shop Hugo Vinçon. A year later the Amat family joined the project which, now under the name of Vinçon, sold glass and porcelain. In those forties, this was one of the avenues with the most art galleries per square meter, after the bulk of those that existed in Ciutat Vella moved to the more bourgeois Paseo de Gràcia.
But we would still have to wait for the great revolution of 1967, when, already under the control of the Amat family, the establishment became a thermometer of modernity in Barcelona and a benchmark for good design, decoration and avant-garde objects. Until its closure in 2015, the scenography of its shop windows, which transcended the purely commercial, never ceased to surprise. Furthermore, in 1973 a space was allocated for exhibitions in memory of the artistic past of the property, when the studio of the painter Ramón Casas was transformed into La Sala Vinçon. Then came the annexation of the main floor to open up a furniture section. From there you could access the interior terrace, one of the most beautiful and best preserved patios in Eixample.
This link between the building and art and fashion for 125 years is still alive after the meticulous restoration carried out by Massimo Dutti, when the 150th anniversary of Ramon Casas' birth was celebrated and it had been a year since Vinçon had closed. Since then, the fashion brand has organized temporary contemporary art interventions, such as that of Pamen Pereira: a waterfall of stones and swallows suspended over the store's atrium, pure poetry. In addition, he has recovered several pieces of wallpaper designed for Vinçon by Estudio Mariscal and on the first floor sketches by Bastida, found by Evaristo Sáenz in the Mercantinc antiques market, are displayed.
The art installations are contemporary, but Massimo Dutti's flagship store is a small modernist museum, where ceilings, floors, tiles and the impressive fireplace made by Josep Pascó in 1902 have been recovered. The two interior patios and the old one have been opened and dark Vinçon has been filled with light. The objective of the reform, explained by the Galician firm, is that “the space accompanies the product, not cannibalize it.”
At the entrance, original elements of the stuccoed ceiling, ceramic moldings and lamps were recovered. After the plant-shaped wrought iron at the entrance, there is access to a remarkable marble staircase, two open-air interior patios, a corner patio and the old garages, which house the women's fashion collection. The street plan preserves the cast iron columns.
The recovery of the patios and terrace is the work of the Welsh landscape studio of Harry and David Rich, who work for brands such as Chanel and are known for the BBC program Garden Rescue. The corner patio is the wildest and next to it was Casas' studio. The upper terrace, with modernist ceramics by Josep Orriols on the walls, has been decorated with magnolia trees, plum trees, maples, grevilleas, lilies, hibiscus, tibutinas, euphorbias and aromatic plants in terracotta pots replicas of those that were originally in the patios of the Eixample.
The designers were inspired by Picasso's primary colors. In addition, a polychrome mosaic bench and a retro-style Massimo Dutti delivery van were recovered. From this terrace you can see the undulating rear façade of La Pedrera, dyed reddish brown. It is a unique point of view offered by a unique building converted into a jewel store.
