Roadside Attraction: Gaudi's Casa Mila (Sketches of Spain Part 4)

"Those who look for the laws of nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator."

                                                                     Antoni Gaudi i Comet, 1852-1926            

Few buildings express this philosophy as comprehensively as Gaudi's Casa Mila, an apartment building completed over the years 1906-12.  Commissioned by the Mila family, who occupied the main floor and rented out the other apartments, it is Gaudi's last completed secular work and a landmark of Catalan modernism.  A visionary effort at making a total work of art, it was also a kind of poem about the future...

Nicknamed La Pedrera (the stone quarry) by observers while under construction, the structure addresses its corner site and encloses interior space with organic forms accentuated by the undulating ridges denoting the floor levels. Despite the flowing exuberance of the form, the building was not built of reinforced concrete, a technology that was then being explored by architect Auguste Perret in Paris. Instead, the sculptured mass of La Pedrera was chiseled from stone blocks. In this way, the building was a study model (or a dream) about the 20th century, configured through 19th century materials and crafts.

The pattern of the entrance gate may refer to patterns in nature: scales, plant forms, or even cells. 

Gaudi used color and texture everywhere, with a profusion of multicolored tiles accenting form and structure outside and on the interior, as on this ceiling...

Note how the subtle, multicolored shadings of the ceiling continue onto the surfaces of the exterior facade, and how the disciplined geometry of the facade shades into the irregular curved surfaces recalling the folds of drapery, at the junction of the facade and the ceiling below it…in the same way that one color shades into another.

A closeup of the metal ribbons forming the balcony railings shows the twisting, organic forms reminiscent of plant forms.

The vaulted attic, where the laundry was located, provided Gaudi with the opportunity to explore his fascination with parabolic arches; there are 270 of them, all executed in stone. Gaudi created models of his catenary curves by hanging weights on strings, drawing the resulting curves, and then turning these images upside down...

An parabolic arch on the rooftop provides a view of the Sagrada Familia, the church Gaudi designed and which began construction in 1882.  Like Casa Mila, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The church is slated for completion in 2026. 

Devoutly religious, Gaudi had infused Casa Mila with spiritual symbolism and had planned a large statue for the roof.  Plans for this were abandoned when it turned out that the building exceeded the cubic volume allowed by the city, and the Mila family had to negotiate with the city government so that the attic, parapet and rooftop sculptures could remain. 

Natural forms, religious mysticism and the world of fantasy converge in the mysterious, and to some, disquieting forms of the roof… 

…a world where chimneys become masks and the laws of geometry are invoked to generate the shapes of cryptic totems. Besides mysticism and the structural adventurism of Catalan modernism, other strains of thought may have influenced Gaudi. The science fiction writer Jules Verne died the year the building was begun, and proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement were warning about the dangers of a world run by machines.  World War I began two years after Casa Mila was completed.

Photo Credit:  All photos were generously provided by George Havelka, who also provided most of the other photos in the "Sketches of Spain" series.

Forgotten Classic: Pegaso, Spain's Flying Horse (Sketches of Spain Part 3)

As Spain's unlikely entry in the exotic sports car sweepstakes, the Pegaso was forgotten almost as soon as production officially ended in 1959, and certainly by the time the last Z-103 was assembled from leftover parts in 1962.  A car allegedly designed to bring attention to Pegaso trucks built by the Empressa Nacional des Autocamiones S.A. (ENASA), it showcased engineering features that were uncommon on any production car when it showed up at the Paris Show in 1951.  The layout (4-cam dry sump V8, rear-mounted 5 speed transmission with inboard rear brakes) seemed very advanced for a road car, but the Pegaso actually restated the technology established by pre-WWII racing cars. Mercedes-Benz and Miller had produced 4-cam V8s in that period, and the Pegaso’s De Dion rear suspension with trailing arms echoed a layout engineer WIlfredo Ricart had tried on his design for the mid-engined Alfa Romeo 512 GP car. Like many other Fifties specialist  car builders, Pegaso stayed with drum brakes throughout its production run, and this proved to be a problem in competition.

Once the somewhat clunky, slab-sided factory-bodied prototypes like this 1952 Barcelona coupe were introduced in Paris, Ricart looked for strategies to increase the car’s appeal. The factory built two Cupola coupes based on sketches by their student design apprentices with enclosed wheels and accentuated curves to attract attention at car shows. This approach to design was in line with Ricart's stated goal of using the sports car program to train engineers for the series-produced truck program.  The Cupola coupes certainly attracted lots of attention at car shows...

...featuring themes borrowed from futurist science fiction and recent aircraft practice, like the bubble canopy at the rear.  One bright yellow car was sent to the USA, where it was tested by a car magazine and exhibited at the 1953 New York Auto Show.  Brewster Automotive in Long Island was named the US Distributor, but had no luck selling cars with prices quoted by Road & Track as ranging from $12,000 to $18,000.  The yellow Cupola was nicknamed "El Dominicano" and sent to Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican Repubic dictator and Franco ally. One Cupola survives today, in the Netherlands.

A second strategy, of commissioning bodies from established coachbuilding houses, got off to a rocky start with the Z-102 cabriolet and coupe designs Jacques Saoutchik produced for Pegaso in Paris in 1952.  Unfortunately, the combination of swoopy, separate front fender shapes inspired by Thirties French Deco with Fifties envelope lines at the rear did not harmonize with the car's short (91.5 inch) wheelbase, and the car had what the British would call a "neither fish nor fowl" flavor...

But also in 1952, Superleggera Touring of Milan showed the timeless coupe design that became most strongly associated with Pegaso. This, like the contemporary Ferrari coupes by Touring and Vignale, featured tightly contoured alloy panels wrapped around the mechanicals. Working under the direction of Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni, designer Franco Formenti produced a clean, modern envelope body with details that were exclusive to Pegaso, including the nostrils cut into the forward part of the hood, the crossbar grille, and the delicate trim pivoting around a circular emblem which links the rear windows to the side ones...

The nostril theme was featured on most of the Touring Superleggera road cars, and even on the deck lids of the fastback berlinettas, until the Panoramica which came after the mid-Fifties.  The photo below shows the window trim which makes the C-pillar look thinner than it really is, as well as some functional air extractor vents.  By 1956 the price of this Touring berlinetta was $15,000.

Jacques Saoutchik caught up with the times (or at least with the chassis dimensions) by offering the sleekly elongated 2nd Series coupes shown below in 1954-55. Note how the rear fenders extend well beyond the trunk line to divert attention from the short wheelbase, with the arc of the wheel cutouts centered back of the wheel centerline to the same effect. The low, steeply-sloped roofline helps as well...

At the front, the fenders extend past stacked, hooded headlights, again exaggerating the car's length...

Ricart's design checked many of the boxes on the exotica checklist for 1950s car enthusiasts.  It was powered by V8 with four overhead cams sitting atop an aluminum block, it featured a 5-speed transaxle with the gearbox sitting rear of the axle centerline.  Engine sizes started at 2.5 liters, but most cars were built with 2.8 liters and there were some 3.2s. On the mechanical front, however, there was little development. Pegaso offered a 3-year warranty and free upgrades to improved components, but disc brakes were never offered, and nothing was done about the dead feel of the steering which owed to what one mechanic called “yards of linkage”. The transmission, despite its optimum location for balanced weight distribution, remained devoid of synchronizers. According to the late David Love, a master mechanic and judge at the 1994 Pebble Beach Pegaso show, the water pump was hard to reach, and early Pegasos were known for overheating. On Touring’s Thrill Berlinetta show car below from 1953, porthole fender vents were added to deal with this problem, but these were removed when the car was restored...

The spectacular Thrill was unique in all senses.  Only one was built, and no other car of this period featured the boundary layer air control offered by the structural "flying buttresses" designed by the Anderloni / Formenti duo that had hatched the classic Z-102B berlinettas. Roughly half of all Pegasos eventually built would be by Touring Superleggera.  In the early 1960s, Raymond Loewy would propose a boundary layer control device on his Lancia Flaminia showcar.

The car also featured the use of seat belts, though Nash and Saab also contended for the pioneering honors on that safety innovation.  As the photo below shows, Pegaso likely did a better job of publicizing this feature than anyone else; note also how the door frame has been drilled for lightness.

Two competition spyders and one competiton coupe were built by Touring, and at least one competition spyder was bodied by Serra. One was running well in the Carrera Panamericana in 1954, but a crash ended the effort.  Pegaso's Le Mans effort suffered a similar fate.  

I shot this Z-102BS 3.2 liter supercharged Touring spyder at Laguna Seca.  Though the cars did well in Spanish hillclimbs, they didn't have to compete against Ferraris or disc-braked Jaguars there, and the uphill climbs lessened the likelihood of terminal brake fade. Engineer Ricart was never persuaded that disc brakes would improve the car's marginal stopping power.  The last Pegaso, built for his son from leftover parts in 1962, went out the door with drums...

The last time Pegaso got a retrospective on the West Coast, it was at Pebble Beach in 1994. A dozen of the cars showed up, comprising over 15 percent of the original total supplied by the Barcelona factory. The meticulously restored Z-103 Panoramica Touring coupe below was fielded at Pebble Beach and Palo Alto by the aerospace engineer who rebuilt it.

Rather than focus on developing one version of the existing 4-cam V8, the factory offered multiple displacements from 2.5 liters (the Z102), to 2.8 and 3.2 liters (the Z012B) and also supercharged versions of the 2.8 and 3.2 called Z102BS. A desmodromic-valve version was rumored but apparently never raced. Instead, Ricart abruptly abandoned the 4-cam and introduced what was claimed to be a completely new pushrod V8 at the Paris Show in 1955. This was to be offered in sizes from 3.9 to 4.7 liters, but car production was impeded by truck production sharing the same line, and few examples of the new engine were made.  Instead, the lightly modified Z103 chassis that was bodied by Touring in this Panoramic style with American-style wraparound windshield was usually outfitted with leftover 4-cam V8s, as were the Serra cabrios. Apparently around half a dozen of the Panoramic Z103s were built, including one notchback coupe. The pushrod Z103 V8, with its hemispherical combustion chambers, was said to resemble the design of the contemporary Chrysler V8s according to historian Thomas Parker. This is interesting, as Chrysler vehicles were sold in Spain by Barreiros by at this time, and eventually assembled there. 

During the slowdown which coincided with moving car production to Madrid around 1957, a handful of these these convertible bodies by Serra were built in Spain. At least three of these were rebodied Z-102s which had suffered accidents (perhaps because of those notorious brakes).  At least one received the pushrod engine intended for the "production" Z-103, and it is in the Salamanca Motor Museum.

In retrospect, the Pegaso enterprise seems to have succeeded only in promoting the company’s trucks; production and sales of Pegaso trucks thrived for a long time after car production was abandoned.  Three of the four Z-103s built were equipped with leftover Z-102 engines, including, apparently, all the Panoramicas, like the one below.  Perhaps fittingly, Dodge, like Pegaso a builder of trucks and V8s with hemispherical combustion chambers, adopted the crossbar grille for its trucks and eventually its cars.

*Footnote:  Most Pegasos were built in Barcelona, in an old Hispano-Suiza factory, but ENASA moved production to Madrid late in the series of an estimated 84 to 86 cars. Hispano-Suizas are featured in our post for Sept. 25, 2017, entitled "Hispano-Suiza: Swiss Precision, Spanish Drama, French Style" and also in "One of One: A Brief History of Singular Cars" from Sept. 7, 2015.

Photo Credits: For simplicity's sake, we'll list these by type of car.

Z-102 Saoutchik cabriolet prototype (black & white shot):  IMCDB.org

Z-102B Touring Superleggera Thrill coupe, black and white shots only:  Touring Superleggera

Z-102B Serra Spider (black & white shot): pieldetoro.net

Z-103 Serra Spider (red car):  webcarindario.com

Z-102 BS Touring Superleggera competition spyder and Z-103 Touring Panoramica coupe:

These 4 photos are by the author. 

Special thanks:  All the other shots, including the color shots of the early Barcelona coupe and the Cupola, all color shots of early Touring berlinettas including the Thrill, and both Series 2 Saoutchik coupes, were generously donated by George Havelka, expert observer of anything with style.

Roadside Attraction: Casa Battlo in Barcelona (Sketches of Spain Part 2)

Mention Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) and the first building many people will think of will be the Sagrada Familia, the mysterious and complex church in Barcelona which has been famously under construction since 1882 and is slated to be finished in 2026.  But some of the architect's most compelling work is residential, including Casa Battlo, built in 1905-07.

The aura of mystery begins at the street facade, with its dreamlike windows and door openings, vertical supports resembling bones, mosaic tile called trencadis at the upper levels and roof parapets and mask-like upper balconies. The facade with its glass tiles was restored this year.

The aura of mystery continues on the interior, where an almost obsessive attention to form and detail lends a mystical unity to structure and space.  Here the folds of a spiralling ceiling play with light and shadow.

Because of its location in Catalonia on the Mediterranean, Barcelona includes strains of Catalan culture as well as traces of the many ethnic and religious groups whose trade routes carried them to the ancient port city. The doorway to the stairwell may have references to keyhole doors in the Moorish world, as well as to the sea creatures that inspired some of Gaudi's organic forms and shapes.

The stained glass windows reflect the organic themes as well as the dedication to detail completion that were hallmarks of Gaudi's work.

                                         

The playful curves and bright colors of the ground level window wall surprise and delight visitors today; the sheer percentage of glazed area must have been a revelation at the beginning ot the 20th Century.

The curving stairway with its scalloped edges welcomes visitors who make their entrance through the glazed keyhole opening of the doorway shown earlier...

The atrium space is lined with organically curved windows; the deepening color and rhythm of the tile textures lend an undersea feeling, perhaps appropriate to a port city at the edge of the ocean, and also consistent with the themes of Gaudis other work.  Casa Battlo was the first building on which Josip Maria Jujol worked on the details, but historians are not certain where Gaudi's work ends and Jujol's begins.

The relentless inventiveness of the interior continues from the atrium to the roofscape, where a playful phantasmagoria awaits the visitor.  The waving, tiled forms of the multicolored chimneys and the parapet beyond hold references to sea creatures and Christian symbols.  Casa Battlo was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.

Photo Credits:  

All photos were graciously provided by George Havelka, who also provided photos for "Roadside Attraction: Guggenheim Bilbao—Sketches of Spain Part 1" on June 9, 2019.

Roadside Attraction: Guggenheim Bilbao---Sketches of Spain Part 1

As a few of our tiny but loyal circle of readers have embarked on summer travels in places that have actually experienced warm weather, we have received some digital postcards from them, along with some illuminating comments. Today we're posting George Havelka's photos and review of the Guggenheim Bilbao because it was actually designed as a roadside (or more properly, harbor-side) attraction.  George is an enthusiastic amateur art and architectural historian, as you'd maybe not expect from someone trained in economics. In line with our tradition (starting today) of posting guest editorials, his notes are in italics... 

Guggenheim review: 

Growing up in Chicago l learned Louis Sullivan’s maxim FoFoFu...Form Follows Function, which was the foundation of the modernist movement that expanded throughout the world in the 20C. All of Gehry’s architecture is a refutation of FoFoFu, in that there are few connections between what’s happening inside his buildings and what it looks like outside. However dislocated and ‘inorganic’ his creations, they do present the viewer with myriad curious forms as well as incredible construction challenges. Seemingly without regard to cost, metal sheathing, curved tile work, vast spaces without purpose (other than presenting space between things) are built as a visual delight to encounter. (But for what purpose?  It’s kinda hedonistic). Hopefully, someone coming along soon will unite Gehry’s visual candy store with the firm grounding of FoFoFu. 

As to the Art inside:

For all the exterior scale, the interior has few galleries, though each is quite large and very tall. Inside the galleries are few works. We weren’t moved by any of the art. (Except the Serra installation). So I’d say if it wasn’t for the draw of the building, you wouldn’t go there for the art. 

Next?  More prehistoric cave art. 

Photo Credits:  All photos were graciously provided longtime reader, sometime contributor and old friend George Havelka, who also provided the essay. These were intriguing to me as the Guggenheim Bilbao is still on my list of roadside attractions to visit. In our Archives, Mr. Havelka also provided photos for "Roadside Attraction:  Rolling Sculpture at the North Carolina Museum of Art", from Dec. 31, 2016.