Casa Planells

Casa Planells
1923
Presented by Dane Kinney

The building is the result of a succession of different programs, all proposed by the contractor, Eveli Planells. The first proposal consisted in a single-family dwelling, where Jujol recreates the forms of La Pedrera to turn the building into a plinth for a large-scale statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The second commission was also for a single-family dwelling, in this case for a doctor, but the contractor finally decided to sell part of the plot and build an apartment building on the rest. A duplex system is employed to offset the plot’s small surface area and increase the dwelling’s by a third. Jujol’s project incorporated a penthouse for Planell’s brother, with a strip of galleries in the façade supporting a dome decorated with the Marian anagram. The building that was ultimately constructed, up to the second floor, is more in keeping with the rhetoric of emerging rationalism than with the forms handed down by Modernisme.