At the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, the Palau de la Música Catalana, the Casa Lleó Morera, the Castell dels Tres Dragons, the Casa Fuster and many other works by the great Catalan architect, nature seems determined to enter architecture. But why?
Today, The Grandma has been thinking about this question while reading a fascinating book, Flora i fauna representades a l'Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, by Fàtima López and Gemma Martí. And the more she reads, the more evident something becomes. These plants and animals are not simply decoration. They are a language.
To understand them, we must remember that nature was one of the great sources of inspiration for European Art Nouveau and Catalan Modernisme. Industrialisation had profoundly transformed nineteenth-century cities. Iron, machines, factories and mass production were changing the landscape and people's lives. Modernisme embraced modernity, but paradoxically it also looked intensely towards nature. The straight line could become a stem. A column could resemble a tree. Stone could grow leaves. Iron could twist like a branch. Glass could become petals. Architecture could become organic.
For Domènech i Montaner, however, nature was more than a collection of beautiful forms. It could also carry meaning. Nature as a language Human beings have used plants and animals as symbols since Antiquity. The rose can suggest love, beauty, sacrifice or spiritual perfection. The lily can evoke purity. Laurel can represent glory. The palm can suggest victory and martyrdom. The oak can signify strength and endurance. Birds can evoke freedom or transcendence. Lions can represent strength and authority. Dragons can embody danger, protection, mythology or the eternal struggle between good and evil.
But symbols are never completely universal. Their meaning depends on their location, their historical context and the other elements surrounding them. And this is precisely what makes looking at Domènech i Montaner's buildings so fascinating. They can be read. A façade becomes a text. A mosaic becomes a sentence. A flower becomes a word.
Perhaps nowhere is this dialogue between architecture and nature more moving than at the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. There, real nature and represented nature coexist. Outside, patients encountered gardens, trees, medicinal and aromatic plants, sunlight and fresh air. Inside, nature followed them.
Flowers and leaves appeared on ceilings and walls. Plants became ceramics and mosaics. Animals appeared in sculpture and ornamentation. Nature had crossed the threshold. This was particularly significant in a hospital.
The official educational material of Sant Pau explains that flowers and leaves were used extensively because nature was an important source of inspiration for Modernisme. But it also points to something much more human: a patient confined to bed could open their eyes and still contemplate representations of nature around them. Here ornament was not superfluous. It helped transform an institution devoted to illness into an environment devoted to life.
At the Palau de la Música Catalana, the relationship changes. This is not a hospital. It is a temple of music. And consequently nature seems to perform. Flowers explode into colour. Floral motifs cover ceramics and stained glass. Organic forms surround the stage and invade the concert hall. Architecture, sculpture, mosaic and stained glass cease to behave as independent arts. They become an orchestra.
This was fundamental to Domènech's conception of architecture: the building could become a total work of art in which architects, sculptors, mosaicists, ceramicists, glassmakers and craftsmen contributed to a single artistic organism. And at the Palau, nature seems to participate in the concert. Flowers become music. Colour becomes sound. Light becomes rhythm. The distinction between building and decoration almost disappears.
The Casa Lleó Morera offers another fascinating example because symbolism becomes intensely personal. Even the names of the family enter the decorative programme.
The Generalitat's heritage documentation notes that images referring to the family surnames recur throughout the building. Lleó invites the lion; Morera evokes the mulberry tree.
Architecture becomes biography. This is one of the delights of Modernisme: ornamentation can contain private messages. A visitor sees a beautiful animal or plant. But behind it there may be a surname, a family story, a memory or an allegory. The house tells us who lives there without using words.
And then there are the animals. Some belong to the natural world. Others belong to the imagination. Domènech's architecture inhabits both. Birds, insects and other creatures coexist with dragons and heraldic beasts.
The dragon is particularly significant because it occupies an extraordinary place in Catalan culture. It belongs simultaneously to medieval imagery, Christian legend, popular culture and the story of Saint George.
At Sant Pau, the institution itself describes the dragon as a recurrent symbol across cultures and one extensively used in Modernista architecture. And this reminds us that Domènech did not look only towards nature. He also looked towards history. He was deeply interested in medieval Catalunya, heraldry and the country's historical identity. His imaginary garden therefore contains both botany and mythology. Real animals and legendary creatures inhabit the same architectural ecosystem.
Perhaps this is what The Grandma finds most fascinating about Domènech i Montaner. His buildings never seem completely still. Something is always growing. A leaf curls around a surface. A flower opens in a mosaic. An animal watches from a façade. A dragon hides in the stone. A branch becomes iron. Sunlight passes through coloured glass and makes everything change again. The building appears alive. And perhaps this is one of the great differences between ornament and mere decoration. Decoration can be added to something.
But in Domènech's greatest buildings, ornament seems to grow from the architecture. Remove it and you do not simply make the building less beautiful. You remove part of its vocabulary. Because Domènech i Montaner did not merely decorate architecture with nature. He allowed nature to become architecture. And once we learn to recognise its flowers, plants, birds, lions and dragons, his buildings cease to be silent objects. They begin to speak.
Perhaps this is the wonderful secret hidden among all those leaves and flowers. Architecture can be made of stone, brick, iron and glass -and still dream of being alive.
More information: Fundació Lluís Domènech i Montaner
Quin encert en l’elecció de les formes i dels colors!
Senten allò que és natural, la veritat...
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