Celebrating 100 Years of Architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner

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Architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner was not only one of the most influential architects in the Catalan modernisme (modernist) movement, but also a politician and thinker. While less recognizable on an international scale than several of his contemporaries—most notably, Gaudí—his impact on modernist architecture was so significant that the Catalan government declared 2023 the Year of Lluís Domènech i Montaner in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of his death. Exhibitions, public showings of the architect’s private books, blueprints and documents, lectures, tribute concerts, as well as other activities have been organized by the Sant Pau Modernist site and other organizations in his honor.

Biography

Born in 1849 in Barcelona to an upper-class family, Lluís Domènech i Montaner was initially drawn to physics and the natural sciences; later, his focus later turned to architecture, which he studied both at the University of Barcelona and at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. After graduation, he traveled around Europe with friend and fellow architect Josep Vilaseca i Casanovas, where they discovered new architectural trends. Domènech i Montaner in particular was influenced by Prussian architects.

When the Escola d’Architectura de Barcelona (Barcelona School of Architecture) opened in 1875, he joined the faculty, along with Vilaseca. For 45 years, he was a professor at and later the director of the school, and through his buildings as well as his teachings, he helped to shape the Catalan modernist movement and the next generation of Catalan architects. Some of his most outstanding pupils would go on to make their respective marks on Barcelona and beyond, including Josep Puig i Cadafalch, Josep María Jujul, and Antoni Gaudí.

While working at the school, Domènech i Montaner formed a business partnership with his friend and colleague Vilaseca; years later, Domènech i Montaner would break off on his own to set up an individual practice with the support of a circle of regular artistic collaborators, craftsmen, other architects and prestigious industrialists.

Throughout his life, he wrote numerous articles on architecture for newspapers, technical journals and other publications, many of them staunchly Catalan in their political views. He even founded the magazine, El Poble Català. He collaborated with different publishing houses—including his father’s publishing company, Editorial Domènech—on various books, including the massive volume Historia General del Arte (General History of Art). He also designed a number of typefaces and book covers for Editorial Domènech, and was the editor of Biblioteca Artes y Letras.

Domènech i Montaner and his wife, María Roure i Marnesoltes, had eight children. One of his sons, Pere Domènech i Roura, as well as a son-in-law named Francesc Guàrdia i Vidal, helped him carry out his work in the last years of his life, while he devoted much of his time to studying history and heraldry. He died of stomach cancer in 1923, and is buried in the Sant Gervasi Cemetery in Barcelona.

Politics 

Clearly multitalented, creative and hardworking, his politics were also clear: he was a part of the Catalan movement in the second half of the 19th century known as the renaixença, or “rebirth,” and firmly believed in Catalunya’s right to autonomy. He was the president of the Catalan League in 1888, and later the Catalan Union in 1891, of which he was a founding member. 

He also played an important role in the commission that drew up the document known as the Bases de Manresa, which was a list of demands for Catalan self-government. He was a founding member of organizations such as La Jove Catalunya, El Centre Català, and a member of the Lliga Regionalista and El Centre Nacional Català.

Domènech i Montaner was elected as a deputy to the Spanish Cortes in 1901 as part of the candidature known as the quatre presidents, or “four presidents,” and then re-elected in 1903; however, he left political life behind in 1904 in order to devote himself full-time to architecture and related studies. 

Building

Domènech i Montaner’s “pre-modernist” period was marked by both the Germanic influences he’d picked up on his travels, as well as by Mudejar and Hispano-Arabic decorative elements. Later, his style would evolve as the art nouveau, or modernist, aesthetic boomed in popularity with the up-and-coming turn of the century bourgeoisie.

He differed from his contemporaries in the modernisme movement in that, as time went on, his style of building employed lighter structural elements, while maintaining his focus on ornamentation. His most famous buildings are the Hospital de Sant Pau and the Palau de la Música, both modernist landmarks in the city of Barcelona. Each of these iconic buildings won awards in the annual architectural competition organized by the Barcelona City Council, and were later declared to be UNESCO World Heritage sites (1997). 

Fundació Antoni Tapiès

The building that houses Fundació Antoni Tapiès just off Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona was an early work by Domènech i Montaner; commissioned by the head of the publishing house Simon i Montaner—who happened to be his uncle—in 1879, it would be the building that consolidated the offices of that business. Simon i Montaner published important art books, catalogs and journals, and with which Domènech i Montaner would later collaborate as a writer and illustrator. Like the commissions that would come a few years later for the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1888, this was an early example of Domènech i Montaner exploring building techniques and honing his personal style, edging towards modernisme. The construction was completed in 1882. 

The publishing house declared bankruptcy in 1981, and the Tapiès museum took over the space in 1984, adding the highly recognizable statue Nuvil i cadira (“Chair and Cloud”) to the top of the building.

El Castell dels Tres Dragons 

El Castell dels Tres Dragons played an important part of Domènech i Montaner’s evolution as an architect. Located in the Parc de la Ciutadella, it was one of several commissions that the young builder received for the Universal Exposition in 1888; it was later converted into the city’s Zoological Museum, and was eventually transformed into a restaurant. The exposed brickwork, eye-catching ceramics, mosaics, stained glass and exposed iron structure and detailing were intended to be both decorative and functional. Both the building methods and the decorative elements were revolutionary at the time. 

This building is often considered to mark the start of his modernist period; he would continue to expand the innovative use of these materials in future constructions, further cementing his unique aesthetic. Another of the buildings constructed for the Expo was the Hotel International, which no longer exists; it was built in an astonishingly short period of only 53 days.

Institut Pere Mata

The Institut Pere Mata in Reus was a facility built to house and treat mentally ill patients. Its construction began in 1897 and was completed in 1919; the architect was given the task of creating a building that was aesthetically pleasing, with a structure in service of members of the community with specific emotional and medical needs. At the time, there was an increased societal focus on better ways to approach mental health and medicine, and the building’s design reflects that. 

Individual, separate internal pavilions provided privacy for patients, and they were connected by convenient internal passageways that were light and airy. The stained glass, mosaics and ceramics were all intended to add calm and beauty to what could, in the hands of another designer, have been a forbidding and sterile environment. The techniques the architect used while designing and erecting the Institut were adapted and improved upon in Domènech i Montaner's later design for Barcelona’s iconic Hospital de Sant Pau.

El Palau de la Música Catalana

The Palau de la Música Catalana, located in the city’s casc antic (historic center), was commissioned by the Orfeo Català, a local music society that wanted a special setting for their concerts and the concerts of other Catalan artists. The project began in 1905 and was inaugurated only three years later. It was funded by donations from wealthy industrialists and local merchants, and would consistently support local composers and groups throughout its history. 

One of the governing principles of modernist architecture is the melding of various disciplines to create beauty as well as functionality: architecture, metalworking, ceramics, sculpture, stained glass and more. This concert hall is not only one of the most famous and eye-catching examples of modernist construction in the world, it’s also one of the best illustrations of this doctrine of a multimedia approach. The construction methods used were quite daring at the time, employing flying buttresses, prelaminated panels and walls of glass, adorned with ceramic and stone.

Every detail of the Palau’s outer façade and internal decoration has something to do with musical tradition, artistic inspiration or Catalan history and culture. There are busts of Beethoven and Wagner, as well as of Catalan choir director Anselm Clavé. Winged horses, representing Pegasus from Greek mythology, run rampant amidst massive ceramic roses. The artists and artisans involved in the work were some his regular collaborators: the stained glass (including the famous skylight) was created by Antoni Rigalt i Granell; cement tiles by Escofet; ceramics by Modest Sunyol and Josep Orriols; mosaics by Lluís Brú; sculptures by the artists Pau Gargallo, Eusebi Arnau, Miquel Blay and Didac Massana. 

The building was renovated in the 1980s by Oscar Tusquets Blanca with the help of Carles Díaz; they took care not to refurbish, but not change, the original details that make the site so unique, but they did add an adjoining six-story building that contains dressing rooms, a library, and the Palau’s documents archive. 

Today, the Palau de la Música is one of the most beloved symbols of modernist architecture in Catalunya, as well as one of the most unique concert venues in the world. Artists ranging from guitar legende Andrés Segovia to jazz icon Ella Fitzgerald, and from the Berliner Philharmoniker (led by Richard Strauss) to Woody Allen have performed on its stage and a number of works have premiered there.

The Hospital de Sant Pau

The building project that was the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau in Barcelona was started in 1905, and finally completed in 1930. Like the Institut in Reus, its design similarly reflected society’s growing concerns with public health in urban centers. Domènech i Montaner researched solutions that other architects had implemented when building modern hospitals in cities like London and Paris.

In the end, he repeated his idea of isolated pavilions, but converted the passages into underground tunnels, built with steel structures and Catalan vaulted ceilings. The main entrance was designed to feel open and welcoming, to bring comfort to patients and their families. The hospital was sometimes referred to as a city within a city, as its massive complex housed thirty different buildings, interspersed with gardens and a tree-lined main promenade. The north-south axis orientation of the plans maximized the natural light that would enter the buildings. The building materials used were brick and stone from the local Montjuïc quarries, with sculptures by Pau Gargallo and Francesc Madurell i Torres.

The Hospital de Sant Pau is located in the neighborhood of Eixample; it is the only modernist site built by Domènech i Montaner with all the original blueprints and documentation intact; these will be on display at the site throughout the rest of 2023.

Other notable buildings include the Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid, the Gran Hotel in Palma de Mallorca, the Castell de Santa Misericòrdia in Canet de Mar, and private residences Casa Fuster—today, a famous hotel—Casa Lleó Morera and the Casa Tomàs in Barcelona, Casa Nàvas and Casa Rull in Reus, and Casa Solà Morales in Madrid, among others.