After attending another year a wonderful performance by the Orfeó Català at the Sant Esteve Concert at the Palau de la Música Catalana, today, The Grandma is reading a very interesting book about the life of the brilliant architect who built this fascinating and magical UNESCO World Heritage Site. The book is written by Lluís Domenech i Girbau, his grandson, and talks about the work and idea of architecture of this universal architect, a key figure of Catalan Modernism, who passed away on a day like today in 1923.
Lluís Domènech i Montaner (21 December 1850-27 December 1923) was a Catalan architect who was very much involved in and influential for the Catalan Modernism, the Art Nouveau/Jugendstil movement. He was also a Catalan politician.
Born in Barcelona, he initially studied physics and natural sciences, but soon switched to architecture. He was registered as an architect in Barcelona in 1873. He also held a 45-year tenure as a professor and director at the Escola d'Arquitectura, Barcelona's school of architecture, and wrote extensively on architecture in essays, technical books and articles in newspapers and journals.
His most famous buildings, the Hospital de Sant Pau and Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, have been collectively designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
As an architect, 45-year professor of architecture and prolific writer on architecture, Domènech i Montaner played an important role in defining the Modernisme arquitectònic in Catalonia. This style has become internationally renowned, mainly due to the work of Antoni Gaudí.
Domènech i Montaner's article En busca d'una arquitectura nacional (In search of a national architecture), published 1878 in the journal La Renaixença, reflected the way architects at that time sought to build structures that reflected the Catalan character.
His buildings displayed a mixture between rationalism and fabulous ornamentation inspired by Arabic architecture, and followed the curvilinear design typical of Art Nouveau.
In the Castell dels Tres Dragons in Barcelona (built for the World's Fair in 1888), which was for many years the Zoological Museum, he applied very advanced solutions (a visible iron structure and ceramics). He later developed this style further in other buildings, such as the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona (1908), where he made extensive use of mosaic, ceramics and stained glass, the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona, and the Institut Pere Mata in Reus.
Domènech i Montaner's work evolved towards more open structures and lighter materials, evident in the Palau de la Música Catalana. Other architects, like Gaudí, tended to move in the opposite direction.
Domènech i Montaner also played a prominent role in the Catalan autonomist movement. He was a member of the La Jove Catalunya and El Centre Català and later chaired the Lliga de Catalunya (1888)and the Unió Catalanista (1892). He was one of the organisers of the commission that approved the Bases de Manresa, a list of demands for Catalan autonomy. He was a member of the Centre Nacional Català (1889) and Lliga Regionalista (1901), and was one of the four parliamentarians who won the so-called candidature of the four presidents in 1901. Though re-elected in 1903, he abandoned politics in 1904 to devote himself fully to archeological and architectural research.
He died in Barcelona in 1923 and was buried in the Sant Gervasi Cemetery in that city.
Born in Carrer Avinyó in Barcelona, he was the second son of Pere Domènech i Saló, a prestigious publisher and book-binder, and Maria Montaner i Vila, a member of a prosperous family from Canet de Mar, where Domènech i Montaner spent much time in his home/office, now converted into a museum.
Having completed his studies, he travelled through France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Austria to gain experience of trends in architecture.
In 1875, as soon as the Barcelona school of architecture opened, he joined it, along with his friend Josep Vilaseca, as a teacher of topography and mineralogy.
In 1877, he became professor of Knowledge of materials and the application of physiochemical science to architecture.
In 1899, he was appointed professor of Architectural Composition and project teacher.
In 1900 he became director of the school of architecture, and between 1901 and 1905 he was substituted by Joan Torras i Guardiola but he returned to the post from 1905 to 1920.
His teaching career lasted 45 years, and he exercised a considerable influence on what was to become Modernisme in Catalonia. With his colleague Antoni Maria Gallissà he subsequently set up a workshop for advanced work on the decorative arts applied to architecture.
Domènech i Montaner's buildings combine structural rationality with extraordinary ornamentation inspired by Hispano-Arabic architectural tradition and by the curves typical of Modernisme. They were in the architectural vanguard at the time, with the use of structural steel and the total utilization of exposed brickwork, and incorporated a profusion of mosaics, ceramics and stained glass, arranged in exquisite harmony.
As director of the School of Architecture he promoted a style that was adopted by many of his pupils. Puig i Cadafalch regarded him as a man of a certain period and of a certain artistic school, who was a sounding-board for developments in other countries, adapting them to his own character in an innovative way.
As the years went by, unlike many Modernist architects, Domènech i Montaner's buildings tended to become lighter, reducing the amount of structural material but retaining ornamentation as a primary element.
No sooner had Domènech graduated than he set out on a tour of Europe in the company of Josep Vilaseca, and was attracted by Prussian architecture. This, as well as Vilaseca's personality, had an influence on his subsequent work.
This influence can be seen in a number of Domènech's works from before 1878 (the year when he published his manifesto En busca d'una arquitectura nacional): the Clavé family tomb and the Casa Montaner on the Ronda de la Universitat, as well as a project for the provincial education institutions that was never built. These works can be regarded as pre-Modernista.
The building for the Editorial Montaner i Simón (1879-1885) was in fact his first work after the manifesto and it employs Mudejar decorative solutions while not abandoning Germanic influence and symbolism.
Domènech went beyond European manifestations, employing a forthright new language to implement an architectural approach founded on a new, integrated concept of all the arts. It was commissioned by his uncle Ramon Montaner i Vila, who also had him build his town house in Barcelona, the Palau Ramon Montaner, and remodel the Castell de Santa Florentina, his residence in Canet de Mar.
Domènech received a number commissions associated with the Exposición Universal de Barcelona (1888). The best-known of these works are undoubtedly the construction of the Hotel Internacional, which no longer exists, but which was put up in a record time of 53 days, and the cafe-restaurant known as the Castell dels Tres Dragons (now the Museu de Zoologia de Barcelona), the building that best expresses these new trends and is considered to mark the beginning of the Modernista period.
At the height of his professional career, Domènech i Montaner took on his largest and most complex works, the ones for which he is most widely recognized. His work on these projects overlapped in time, and he was able to take advantage of the experience gained on each one. Much of the knowledge gained and many of the technical innovations employed on the Expo restaurant (the Castell dels Tres Dragons, now the Geology Museum) were later used in the design and construction of the Palau de la Música, and the avant-garde concepts applied in the Institut Pere Mata were later adopted and improved on at the Hospital de Sant Pau.
The Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de Sant Pau both won awards in the annual architectural competition organized by the Barcelona City Council, in 1905 and 1913 respectively. More recently UNESCO has declared them to be World Heritage.
Domènech contributed to the leading Catalan publications: La Renaixença, Lo Catalanista, Revista de Catalunya, El Diluvio and La Veu de Catalunya.
In 1904, after falling out with Francesc Cambó, he ceased to contribute to La Veu de Catalunya and founded the weekly El Poble Català. He was also the author of many books, some technical works and some political and social essays.
In an article entitled En busca d'una arquitectura nacional (In search of a national architecture), published on 28 February 1878 in La Renaixença, he set forth the guiding principles for a modern, national architecture for Catalonia.
He chaired the assembly that drew up the Bases de Manresa, a document that laid the foundations for the return of the historic rights acknowledged by the Catalan constitutions.
More information: Catalan News
la perfecció de la indústria moderna, no construiria
un edifici com en l’època de Felip August o de sant Lluís,
perquè això seria falsejar la primera llei de l’art
que és conformar-se amb les necessitats i costums dels temps.
If we were to place at the disposal of an architect of the 12th or 13th c.
the perfection of modern industry, he would not construct
a building like in the time of Philip Augustus or Saint Louis,
because that would be to falsify the first law of art
which is to conform to the needs and customs of the times.
Lluís Domènech i Montaner
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