A new museum will soon be coming to the Spanish city of Barcelona. Martínez Lapeña-Torres Arquitectes and Daw Office have superbly restored the Casa Vicens, a private residence designed by the famed Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, and plan to open its doors to the public this fall. The home’s refurbishment officially began in 2015 but did not physically commence until late last year. Casa Vicens is the eighth building in the Catalan capital to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Casa Vicens was designed by Gaudí when he was just 31 years old and was originally intended as a summer home for the local broker Manel Vicens i Montaner. Gaudí would later become known for interpreting traditional Catalan construction methods in his own eccentric way, and this project was his first chance to showcase that eclecticism. The home is adorned with cultural symbols as well as Gaudí’s own iconography, resulting in an uncategorizable building whose creatively unbound style would serve as a sign of things to come in the architect’s future works. Casa Vicens is Gaudí?s first completed building in Barcelona and will now join the ranks of other city landmarks like Park Güell, Casa Batlló, and the still-in-construction Sagrada Familia.
This year will mark the first time that the public has been allowed into the acclaimed house. Before now, Casa Vicens was privately occupied: first as a summer house, then as an apartment complex, and finally as a single-family re...