Casa Milà (, ), popularly known as La Pedrera (, ; "the stone quarry") in reference to its unconventional rough-hewn appearance, is a Modernista building in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It was the last private residence designed by architect Antoni Gaudí and was built between 1906 and 1912.
The building was commissioned in 1906 by and his wife . At the time, it was controversial because of its undulating stone facade, twisting wrought iron balconies, and design by Josep Maria Jujol. Several structural innovations include a self-supporting stone façade, and a free-plan floor, underground garage and the spectacular terrace on the roof.
In 1984, it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Since 2013 it has been the headquarters of the Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera, which manages visits to the building, exhibitions and other cultural and educational activities at Casa Milà.
Building history
Architect Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was born on June 25, 1852, in Catalonia, Spain. As a child, Gaudí's health was poor, suffering from rheumatism. Because of this, he was afforded lengthy periods of time resting at his summer house in Riudoms. Here he spent a large portion of his time outdoors, allowing him to deeply study nature. This would become one of the major influences in his architecture to come.
Today he is regarded as a pioneer of the modern architecture style.
In 1870, Gaudí moved to Barcelona to study architecture. He was an inconsistent student who showed flashes of brilliance. It took him eight years to graduate due to a mix of health complications, military service as well as other activities.
After completion of his education he became a prolific architect as well as designing gardens, sculptures and all other decorative arts. Gaudí's most famous works consisted of several buildings: Parque Güell; Palacio Güell; Casa Mila; Casa Vicens. He also is attributed for his work on the Crypt of La Sagrada Familia and the Nativity facade. Gaudí's work at the time was both admired and criticized for his bold, innovative solutions.
Gaudí was injured on June 7, 1926, when he was run over by a tram. He later died in the hospital due to his injuries on June 10, 1926, at the age of 73. A few years after his death, his fame became renowned by critics and the general public alike.
Building owners
Casa Milà was built for Roser Segimón and her husband Pere Milà. Roser Segimón was the wealthy widow of Josep Guardiola, an Indiano or Americano, or former colonist returned from the Americas, who had made his fortune with a coffee plantation in Guatemala. Her second husband, Pere Milà, was a developer known for his flamboyant lifestyle.
Construction process
In 1905, Milà and Segimón married and on June 9, Roser Segimón bought a house with garden which occupied an area of 1,835 square meters, located on Paseo de Gracia, 92. In September, they commissioned Gaudí for building them a new house with the idea of living in the main floor and renting out the rest of the apartments. On February 2, 1906, the project was presented to the Barcelona City Council and the works began, demolishing the pre-existing building instead of reforming it, as in the case of the Casa Batlló.
The building was completed in December 1910 and the owner asked Gaudí to make a certificate to inhabit the main floor, which the City Council authorized in October 1911, and the couple moved in. On October 31, 1912, Gaudí issued the certificate stating that, in accordance with his plans and his direction, the work had been completed and the whole house was ready to be rented.
Critics and controversies The building did not respect any rules of conventional style, for which Gaudí received much criticism. To begin with, the name "La Pedrera" is in fact a nickname assigned by the citizens who disapproved of its unusualness. The unique structure of the building and the relationship between the building's architect and Pere Milà became the object of ridicule for the people of Barcelona and many humorous publications of the time.
Catholic symbols
Gaudí, a Catholic and a devotee of the Virgin Mary, planned for the Casa Milà to be a spiritual symbol. Overt religious elements include an excerpt from the Rosary on the cornice and planned statues of Mary, specifically Our Lady of the Rosary, and two archangels, St. Michael and St. Gabriel.La Pedrera (Casa Milà, 1906–1910) Gaudiclub.com
However, the Casa Milà was not built entirely to Gaudí's specifications. The local government ordered the demolition of elements that exceeded the height standard for the city, and fined the Milàs for many infractions of building codes. After Semana Trágica, an outbreak of anticlericalism in the city, Milà prudently decided to forgo the religious statues. Gaudí contemplated abandoning the project but a priest persuaded him to continue.
Change of ownership
In 1940, Milà died. Segimon sold the property in 1946 for 18 million pesetas to Josep Ballvé i Pellisé, known for his department stores on , in partnership with the family of Pío Rubert Laporta. The Compañía Inmobiliaria Provenza, SA (CIPSA) was founded to administer the building.Huertas Claveria,... Roser Segimon continued to live on the main floor until her death in 1964.Cronologia de l'edifici a La Pedrera Educació
The new owners divided the first floor facing into five apartments instead of the original two. In 1953, they commissioned to convert 13 rubbish-filled attic laundry rooms to street-facing apartments, leaving a communal hallway on the side facing the courtyards. Some of these two or three room apartments had a loft and were designed and furnished in a typical early 1950s style using brick, ceramic and wood. Items of furniture, such as the , were reminiscent of Eero Saarinen's work.Barba Corsini, F.J. Apartamentos en el desván de la Pedrera. Cuadernos de Arquitectura Núm. 22. Any: 1955
The insurance company Northern took over the main floor in 1966. By then, Casa Milà had housed a bingo hall, an academy and the offices of Cementos Molins and Inoxcrom among others. Maintenance costs were high and the owners had allowed the building to become dilapidated, causing stones to loosen in 1971. Josep Anton Comas made some emergency repairs, especially to the paintings in the courtyards, while respecting the original design.Hernàndez-Cros, Josep Emili (ed.). Catàleg del Patrimoni Arquitectònic Històrico-Artístic de la Ciutat de Barcelòna, Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1987
The building was later acquired by the Caixa Catalunya bank. When Caixa Catalunya ceased trading independently as a bank in 2010 and merged with two other savings banks, they formed a not-for-profit foundation to operate the building.
Restoration
Gaudí's work was designated a historic and artistic monument on July 24, 1969. Casa Milà was in poor condition in the early 1980s. It had been painted a dreary brown and many of its interior color schemes had been abandoned or allowed to deteriorate, but it has been restored since including restoring many of the original colors.
In 1984, the building became part of a World Heritage Site encompassing some of Gaudí's works. The Barcelonan city council tried to rent the main floor as an office for the 1992 Olympic bid. Finally, the day before Christmas 1986, Caixa Catalunya bought La Pedrera for 900 million pesetas. On February 19, 1987, urgently needed work began on the restoration and cleaning of the façade. The work was done by the architects Joseph Emilio Hernández-Cros and Rafael Vila. The renovated main floor opened in 1990 as part of the Cultural Olympiad of Barcelona. The floor became an exhibition room with an example of modernism in the Eixample.
Residence Created partly as a tenant’s unit, there were previous tenants including Alberto I. Gache, the consul of the Argentine Republic to Barcelona, Egyptian prince Ibrahim Hassan who even died at his residence in La Pedrera, and motor racing pioneer Paco Abadal, whose family was the first tenants of Casa Milà. As of 2026, the writer Ana Viladomiu is the building's sole remaining resident.
Design The building is 1,323 m2 per floor on a plot of 1,620 m2. Gaudí made the first sketches in his workshop in the Sagrada Família. He designed the house as a constant curve, both outside and inside, incorporating ruled geometry and naturalistic elements.
Casa Milà consists of two buildings, which are structured around two courtyards that provide light to the nine stories: basement, ground floor, mezzanine, main (or noble) floor, four upper floors, and an attic. The basement was intended to be the garage, the main floor the residence of the Milàs (a flat of all 1,323 m2), and the rest distributed over 20 apartments. The resulting layout is shaped like an asymmetrical "8" because of the different shapes and sizes of the courtyards. The attic housed the laundry and drying areas, forming an insulating space for the building and simultaneously determining the levels of the roof.
One of the most notable elements of the building is the roof, crowned with skylights, staircase exits, fans, and chimneys. All of these elements, constructed out of brick covered with lime, broken marble, or glass have a specific architectural function but are also real sculptures integrated into the building.
The apartments feature plastered ceilings with dynamic reliefs, handcrafted wooden doors, windows, and furniture, as well as hydraulic tiles and various ornamental elements.
The stairways were intended as service entries, with the main access to the apartments by elevator except for the noble floor, where Gaudí added a prominent interior staircase. Gaudí wanted the people who lived in the flats to all know each other. Therefore, there were only elevators on every other floor, so people on different floors would meet one another.
Structure
Casa Milà is characterized by its self-supporting stone facade, meaning that it is free of load-bearing walls. The facade connects to the internal structure of each floor by means of curved iron beams surrounding the perimeter of each floor. This construction system allows, on one hand, large openings in the facade which give light to the homes, and on the other, free structuring of the different levels, so that internal walls can be added and demolished without affecting the stability of the building. This allows the owners to change their minds at will and to modify, without problems, the interior layout of the homes.Descripció casa Milà a «any Gaudí» a l'Ajuntament de Barcelona
Constructive and decorative items Facade The facade is composed of large blocks of limestone from the Garraf Massif on the first floor and from the Villefranche quarry for the higher levels. The blocks were cut to follow the plot of the projection of the model, then raised to their location and adjusted to align in a continuous curve to the pieces around them.
The windows of La Pedrera are an integral part of the overall facade design. Gaudí made sure that the windows were of varying sizes, designed to optimize the amount of natural light that could enter the building.
Viewed from the outside the building has three parts: the main body of the six-storey blocks with winding stone floors, two floors set a block back with a different curve, similar to waves, a smoother texture and whiter color, and with small holes that look like embrasures, and finally the body of the roof.Permanyer, 1996....pàg. 150–166
Gaudí's original facade had some of its lower-level ironwork removed. In 1928, the tailor Mosella opened the first store in La Pedrera, and he eliminated the bars. This did not concern anyone, because in the middle of twentieth century, wrought ironwork had little importance. The ironwork was lost until a few years later, when Americans donated one of them to the MoMa, where it is on display.