The attic area of "La Pedrera" was, in addition to being a deposit of useless junk, filled with rats when they commissioned me to study a solution that would allow it to be incorporated into the useful and profitable part of the building. The structure is simple and interesting. The roof rests directly on partition parabolic arches which are about 80cm apart and whose nails are linked by brick ribs that follow catenary guidelines. The approach was logical: rings of passage around the large central patios provide access to the various units, which take advantage of the height of the undulating ceilings by means of mezzanines forming "duplexes". Main idea. The main drawing board has been the floor of the ground plan, with a firm intention of defending "architectural honesty both in the structure and in the materials", valuing a solution for its simplicity, even at the cost of the perfection of the finish. I have clung to this idea to flee from the decorative and baroque styles that have attacked me, as is logical, in an exuberant environment of shapes, discarding the use of manufactured materials in industries that our country does not have. Materials. All of them have been simple materials, even elementary. Essays with raw common brick, refractories of various kinds, ceramics, stones, Galician pine in some coating… In kitchen and bathroom veneers, after some trials in glazing, I have returned to tile, a material with great possibilities, which I have treated in groups of 3 or 4 colours per piece. I believe that the greatest success achieved has been with earthy materials, particularly with refractories because of its hot and vibrant quality. Shapes. These are the result of working in an organic environment with no other forced base than the clean structure, free from the prison of the grid and the 90-degree angle, a logical consequence of industrial standardization, or the use of load-bearing walls, but without justification in structural projects. Open spaces that allow us to conceive a world that is freer and closer to nature that was not created in a grid. I have come to the conclusion that we must take advantage, even in the state of our industry, to allow ourselves certain design liberties that would not be acceptable in more advanced countries, and which allow us to achieve a more humane and attractive architecture. Ground plan management law. The goal is to make life easier with the minimum effort and the maximum sensation of well-being, looking for minimum distances when traveling and adapting the closing lines of the environments whose enclosures are repeatedly floating in plan and elevation to these layouts. Studying the perspectives from the fundamental areas: sleeping, eating and being. Standardisation. It is impossible to normalise anything other than the fundamental idea; I have been able to create a "standard" element that regulates the functions between the little kitchen and the sleeping area, a large polychrome wardrobe that has simplified the work greatly. Colour. As Mediterranean people with red blood in our veins and a blue sea in our landscapes, we cannot see life in black and white; colour is our fourth dimension in Architecture. Essays of contrasting polychromies, ranges of colours of the same order and neutral backgrounds with polychrome parts. The type of paint used is glue; in my opinion, it is the one that gives the best quality. Furniture. It has been necessary to invent all the furniture, due to not finding anything decent on the market. We have had to even invent the Saarinen armchair, already invented. As an experience, a chair with a continuous back and seat and a group inspired by the Moorish "pouf" in the last apartment that reflects the experiences of all the others and in which I have tried to respect "architectural honesty" as much as possible, both in shapes and materials. Conclusion. After living "La Pedrera" daily for more than a year, I have met Gaudí, a true master of our bravest functional architecture. “La Pedrera” began in 1905, when Gaudí was 53 years old, for the couple from Barcelona Mr. and Mrs. Milá, ending in 1910. It is one of the most important works, apart from the Expiatory Temple of the Sagrada Familia, by the great architect.

La planta de la casa sorgeix d’una lectura de dos elements bàsics de l’entorn: els vents que provenen del nord i les vistes sobre les dues caletes, a la banda sud. Dos murs còncaus de pedra de Cadaqués suporten una llosa de formigó que abasta tota la casa, i deixen una petita ranura de llum en tot el perímetre. La sala d’estar es col·loca en el punt de vista privilegiat, i un sistema de murs de maó vist permet el tancament dels dormitoris. La configuració planimètrica fa que la casa no sembli totalment tancada i crea una atmosfera domèstica que eludeix la noció d’un espai interior pròpiament dit.

It is an isolated building that rises on pilotis, and with a practically diaphanous ground floor. The only closed volume occupies about a quarter of the surface; the rest is used as a playground for children. The perimeter garden seems to extend over the ground floor thanks to the construction of a pond and small stone flower beds that evoke the natural world. The distribution of the floor is done by bands: the bedrooms and the service areas face the back, and the day areas face the street. The separation of the studios in the day areas is done by means of panels that do not reach the ceiling and can change depending on the needs. In the attic there are two duplexes set back from the façade. The façade to the street is formed by terraces that extend from one end to the other in cantilever in front of the main body. Barba Corsini was concerned that the terraces could be enjoyed without being seen, so he arranged a series of staggered opaque parapets that generate a very dynamic composition. He had also planned a system of folding shutters on the edge of the terraces, which were finally removed for economic reasons. The building has an important colour treatment that, for the author, represented the fourth dimension of space. The volume is covered in black tile, the balconies are in white sheet metal and, on this non-colour base, the different textures, colours and materials are combined.

In the early 1960s, the area where the building was located was in the process of being developed. The block chooses to line up at the back street and separate from the Ronda del General Mitre. It consists of seven detached apartments, with a total of 298 dwellings. Except for the apartments located on the front, the rest of them have 46 square meters, and they are all available for rental. The standard apartment is designed for a family of up to three young children. The concept of the block is inherited from some proposals of the modern movement, although here they are made through private promotion.

The Old Age Pension and Savings Fund acquired the site of a pre-existing factory and commissioned its demolition to promote, years later, the construction of housing under the state Housing Law. In 1966, it commissioned the project to three architects who had never collaborated together. The architects developed a prior Urban Planning figure to establish the building conditions necessary for the execution of the planned project. They had studied more compact proposals for a closed block and other modalities that they discarded. The project is structured in nine buildings, all of them oriented practically north south, with a slight inclination towards the east, which completely broke the alignment of the Pons Plan of the environment. It contains three towers up to twelve stories high that act as a screen in front of National Highway II. The rest of the buildings, with a ground floor and two or three floors, are located in the part close to the ground and upper floor buildings that predominate in this neighbourhood. Thus, two absolutely differentiated areas. Among them, a series of socialisation spaces were introduced, with the aim of facilitating meetings between neighbours, also freeing up some ground floor spaces, through porches that connect streets or through closed spaces for community use. The free space of the complex is an essential part of the project. The residential complex is structured around a central plaza that is divided into two levels that give access to all the blocks. Access to the complex is through two pedestrian paths that connect with the perimeter street belt. In addition to the central square and the adjacent streets, the complex has four elevated walkways that form a third level of relationship, located 2.80 m above the level of the low blocks. The Can Mercader residential complex is distributed in six types of housing modulated according to a bay of 7.70 m in the upper blocks and 8.50 m in the lower ones. There is a clear intention to introduce variations in terms of distributions, the number of rooms – three or four in the high blocks and four or five in the low blocks –, definition of façades, through the introduction of displacements both in height and in plant, which guarantee the permeability of the complex despite the height of the blocks. On the ground floor, the movements help to provide privacy to the terraces. The homes consist of kitchen, open gallery, dining room-living room, toilet, bathroom, a double room, two to four single rooms, terrace associated with the living room and, in some cases, the room next to it. With this typological variety, the architects offer the possibility of accommodating families of up to eight people in the same home or even ten, something very common at that time that Barba Corsini already proposed in his Mitre housing project in Barcelona.