Jujol approaches the refurbishment of a baroque farmhouse with the intention of changing its aesthetic parameters, of the utmost importance for the modernist culture that goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. The most relevant interventions in the interior are reduced to the chapel and the staircase. Jujol maintains the entire existing wall system, as well as the layout of the openings. He puts all the emphasis on the transfiguration of the main façade, which is explained in a single project drawing that reflects its intention well enough. More rows of flat tiles, all of them different, are added to the wavy cornice. The two side windows on the first floor become two symmetrical tribunes, which flank a new central tribune that evokes the shape of a float, made with delicate iron work and with an unprecedented system of glazed openings. The façade plan is divided by polychrome spots tending to unify the resulting dissymmetry.

In 1915, the Negre family entrusted Josep M. Jujol i Gibert with what was to be the most important and significant transformation of the house. The farmhouse that Jujol had to transform was the home of a wealthy family with rural roots, with distant relations with its agricultural environment, but which conceptually more than physically, wanted to remain linked to its origins.

While it is true that the main centres of Jujol's work were the main façade, the interior staircase and the chapel, it is worth saying that his intervention was not only limited to the area of the farmhouse but also transcended the gardens that surrounded it, although currently some elements no longer exist (the wavy-shaped brick roof in its crowning, the bell that appeared on the west side, etc.) and others have been absorbed by the arrangement and subsequent transformation of the large garden into a unique square that surrounds the house, passing to be part of a newly created encircled enclosure that surrounds it such as the mosaic bank, or a gazebo formed by reinforced arches of organic shapes that remains integrated in the scope of the current Plaça de Catalunya.

The contractor who carried out the works was Pere Xaus. The execution of the work is extended over time, for decades, which entails changes and corrections, which is why the temporality of the work is evident in the materiality of the execution process. Like so many other works commissioned to Jujol, this one could not be concluded due to the financial difficulties of the promoters.

Casa Negre suffered the destructive effects of the war in 1936, and the images of Saint Eugenia and Saint Peter that presided over the chapel were destroyed along with other parts of the building.

Subsequently, the process of abandonment acted inexorably. The owners’ house, located on the west side next to the Negre stream disappeared. The acid-etched glass in the main tribune, representing Our Lady of the Rosary, followed the same fate.

Since 1966, Casa Negre has been owned by the town council of Sant Joan Despí, by transfer from the sons of Pere Negre i Jover. This guardianship does not mean an immediate change in its protection. It is not until the end of the 70s that an interest arises in recovering the Casa Negre.

In 1979, commemorating Jujol's centenary, the foundations were laid to rehabilitate the farmhouse.

In 1982, the architects Gabriel Robert, Antoni Navarro and Xavier Güell drew up a restoration project and the consolidation of the building's structure was carried out. The extension of the attic and the adaptation of the ground floor for an exhibition hall and meeting room.

The three façades were also the object of a careful restoration. During 1991 and 1992, the architect Francesc Xavier Asarta restored the façades, floors, and attic again, including all the paintings on the staircase and the chapel, as well as others of less relevance. This last intervention includes an elevator that connects the floors.

The whole house keeps a perfect stylistic unity. The central element that gathers the observer's attention is undoubtedly the tribune. This tribune, which is above a new door centered on the building, both in its external form and in its internal solution, with two benches on both sides, recalls a chariot covered with a dome and topped by the sculpture of a bird feeding its chicks which remain in the nest. Symmetrically placed, small, rounded tribunes provide light to the main rooms and, between them, a sgraffito of simple lines and great showiness combines the only two colours of the façade: a reddish ocher and off-white.

Pere Negre i Jover, lawyer from Barcelona, but son of Sant Joan Despí, where he had important properties, was one of the few intellectuals enthusiastic about the work and exuberant and revolutionary decorativeism of Jujol.

In 1914, at the request of the owner, Jujol, more given to drawing and detailing than any of the other modernist architects, presented him with a project to reform his house, which extended from 1915 to 1926.

The works basically consisted of the restoration of the façades and the decoration of the interior of the house, where Jujol used all his pictorial resources and filled the ceilings and walls with plant decoration.

The main façade became an altarpiece dedicated to the Virgin Mary, whose image was engraved in the central glass of the tribune, while at the level of the attic you can read "Ave Gratia Plena Dominus Tecum".

Jujol also built a wall to enclose the estate, in which he used only bricks forming partitions topped by pillars and crowned with a small sinuous line of bricks.

In 1920, the oratory was built, covered by an oval dome on shells, which was not finished until 1926.

Jujol had also designed an extension of the house on the back side with a spiral staircase that was to be higher than the roofs and to culminate in a round viewing window, with stained glass, covered with a brush with the symbol of the Redemption.

In this house there are remains of modernist caligraphy by Jujol, who was the best draftsman of letters of all modernism and who was Gaudí's collaborator in the most pictorial and sculptural aspects of his work, such as the ceramic work of the Batlló house, the panels of the Park Güell bench, and the lower painting and railings of the balconies of La Pedrera, among others.

Recently, Casa Negre has been the subject of a restoration by the Generalitat de Catalunya.

HISTORICAL MEMORY

The Masia Negre, in its origins, was a typical Catalan manor house surrounded by the agricultural land it exploited. On the main façade there is still a lintel with the following inscription that places the farmhouse at the end of the 17th century: "1680 Josep Negre". Throughout its history, the building has undergone several works and modifications in order to adapt to the personal requirements of its inhabitants, as well as to the demands of its role as a control centre and agricultural operation. The structure of the building is still the original one. Composed of thick masonry walls that subdivide the floor, lacking, as is usual in this type of construction, a clear regularity or well-defined axes of symmetry. The last interventions already correspond to the 20th century, when the architect Jaume Gustà i Bondia (1853-1939), in the first years of the century, extended the house on its left side, where he built the first-floor gallery, located above the winery and the cellar.