Whoever visits number 43 of Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona today will find a Casa Batlló that has managed to preserve its modernist background, despite the fact that the interiors of the building have undergone considerable reform in recent years. To go to the basement, where there is currently a space for immersive experiences, you have to go down a floating staircase of 13 tons of hand-sculpted black marble that winds with a curtain of aluminum chains by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. Many interactive mirrors are distributed throughout the upper floors. And in the lobby, its original oak staircase now leads to the store that Cartier has located on the first floor, and which will be open until next June, when its flagship store on Passeig de Gràcia itself is finished renovating. full.
It is a temporary transfer, yes, but that does not mean that the Parisian house has designed this 300-square-meter space in a hurry. Inside it has two spaces –one for its collections and the other for cultural activities– in which every detail has been taken care of to the maximum. The sculptural armchairs and sofas, the blown glass lamps on the ceilings or the floors that extend into the high friezes on the wall made from noble wood are the result of the care with which they have designed this new and ephemeral store that says even with a man decked out in the brand’s mythical red bellboy uniform whose mission is to receive customers from the store’s own access, because in reality he occupies a privileged position: right on the first floor, the so-called main floor, lived the textile businessman Josep Batlló who acquired the building in 1903.
Manolo Yllera
Batlló’s idea was to demolish the building but Gaudí, who was commissioned to build the house from scratch, proposed a structural remodeling. And he did that. The architect redistributed the interior partitions, added a fifth floor, changed the façade for its trencadís star that still shines along with the balconies made of Montjuïc stone and iron railings, and resolved the lack of light that the Eixample buildings used to experience expanding the patio of lights. The work lasted from 1904 to 1906, and it was quite an architectural revolution.
So much so that a century later, in 2005, Casa Batlló became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2021 it was declared the world’s best monument of the year. And in 2022, Cartier has become the first tenant that the complex has welcomed in decades, as the building’s management team explains: “With the firm we have resumed the wonderful tradition of having artistic and creative neighbors.” The first was the French film company Pathé Frères, which in 1907 set up a shop in the basement of the house, taking advantage of the arrival of the big screen in Barcelona. “In the forties and fifties, the Chamartín animation studios, creators of the popular Zipi and Zape drawings, and the Syra art gallery, the first in the city run by a woman, also passed through here,” they explain.
The difference is that the French brand does have an approach similar to the one that Gaudí printed in every corner of the house. Its historic collection proves it: since the founder of Cartier began to assemble it in 1847, when the family business was born, pieces far from the typical 19th century were added to it. In other words, jewels and watches that mixed diamonds with onyx, rubies and emeralds, with striking tones and motifs taken from nature, whether they were plants and trees or exotic animals, and whose shapes anticipated the art deco in Paris. In fact, they did it at the same time that the Catalan architect rejected rationalism. Instead of straight lines, in Casa Batlló there are only undulating surfaces, and almost all of them start from the fauna and flora of the Mediterranean with their vibrant tones incorporated throughout the building.
In the store, that resemblance is also underscored. They tell it from the Parisian firm: “The decorators of our house have established a dialogue through images between Cartier’s botanical and zoomorphic creations and Gaudí’s most emblematic codes”. On the walls there are paintings that compare, for example, an XXL necklace with the trencadis on the façade, or the vault of the upper terrace –its tiles simulate the scales of a fantastic dragon– with a chameleon in brooch format accompanied by sapphire inlays along its spine, identical to the oval perforations on the balconies. The store itself harbors many more parallels. Only some, not being so obvious, require a first-person visit to discover them.
