In the course of his life, Puig built or, more precisely, remodelled and extended, two houses for himself. The first was his summer residence in Argentona (1897-1905), the product of joining together two traditional family farmhouses on a triangular site, clearly inspired by Modernisme, and the second was his house-cum-office in Carrer Provença (1916-1917). His purchase of the house which he was to remodel for his own use came at the height of his life as a politician and man of influence of his time: he succeeded Prat de la Riba as President of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya, in which role he was to govern the destiny of the country between 1917 and 1923. His home attracted first a whole entourage of adulators and people seeking the favours that emanate from power; bankers, industrialists and members of his own party attended musical and poetry soirées around the fireplace on the principal floor. In 1923, with the dictatorship of Primo de Ribera and his removal from office as the country's principal authority, the house ceased to be frequented quite so assiduously and became his office and studio, shared only by his few collaborators and those in his confidence. He alternated his time there with frequent trips abroad, before the periods of his forced political exile and his responsibilities as a speaker and lecturer. In the final years of his life, between 1941 and 1956, his house became the clandestine meeting place for the Catalan nationalist resistance, hosting readings of poetry and nationalist texts and other acts of patriotic affirmation. Barcelona and Puig i Cadafalch enjoyed a shared history for almost half a century. The architect was involved in the transformation of the mountain of Montjuïc in the form of the project which he initially drafted and then presented as the basis for the Universal Exhibition of 1929; in the construction of Via Laietana, cutting through the old part of the city down to the sea; in the project for Plaça de Catalunya, and other lesser projects. His opposition to the Cerdà Plan, which was to produce Barcelona's Eixample, was public and well known; he referred to it as "that vulgar, standardising grid" which clashed with his topographic, monumental view of a Haussmann-style, capital, radial, concentric city. It is, then, paradoxical that he should have built his own house in the Eixample that he detested, on a plot with party walls, over an existing house. This erudite, cultivated rehabilitation is a recurring characteristic of his work, which, as opposed to the conservative recipe in vogue at the time, radically transformed what was there into something modern and up to date. Other examples are Ametller house, Pic i Pon house in Plaça Catalunya, the Términus hotel and many others. The house comprises a ground floor with two upper storeys. Its initial separation from its party walls was conserved, giving it the appearance of a detached building which completed neither the permitted height nor the volume stated by municipal regulations. The ground floor continued to be used for commercial use and, by means of the manipulation of the construction span based on three orders of bearing walls, he built the first floor as his own home, in the form of a principal space, arranged in the facade by a central axis resting on a base of columns with the entrance to one side. For the second floor he designed a great hall and the secondary bedrooms, along with his office, which is where most of the documents and plans for his later works were kept. In addition to the difficulties facing any architect when building his own house, being a client of himself and his circumstances, there were the special characteristics marking its construction. My doctoral thesis aims to show that rather than being an architect of Modernisme, a style which he originally cultivated, Puig was in fact the greatest of the eclectics of his time. This house is one of the best examples of this: over a conventional structure of bearing walls, Puig proposed Doric and Corinthian pillars. His passion for the Vienna Sezession can be seen in the Olbrichian composition of the facade, the clearly Borrominian lines of the tribunes and balconies, and the Italianate crowning in the form of a pergola. Its furnishings, central fireplace and aspects of its ornamentation were inspired by the palaces of Trianon, particularly the smaller one, and the rest of its elements can be traced to his love of archaeology: the ceramics, the dividing up of the floors, the joinery, etc. This house, like other of his works, is currently in a lamentable state of preservation. < BACK
Jordi Romeu