This Building.

To say that Casa Batlló is a building feels like an insult. It’s an entity in a league entirely of it's own.

I first saw this building when I was 16 and a family friend was kind enough to take me on a guided tour of it. I liked it aesthetically, for obvious reasons, but listening to the tour guide talk about how Gaudi played with light made it come alive. The lack of straight lines in the house immediately encourages the imagination to abandon any previous concept of what a habitable space could look like. It was thrilling. Prior to this point the only art form I had any connection to was the performing arts. This was the defining spark of curiosity toward other mediums.

I realised that the way the light moved across the walls would allow for a different experience at different times of day and different seasons. It was literally a changing piece of art in front of my eyes, to which I was a participant in.

I will never be able to visit this building enough. I could live there for a year, and my experience would never cease to want more. There is always something new to see, something to be viscerally affected by. An ever changing living soul; my home that I’ve never lived in.

These PlacesTaya De La Cruz22 March 2021Gaudi, Casa Batlló, Architecture, Architect, Barcelona