Enric Sagnier's cosmopolitan modernism - inspired, like much contemporary architecture, by the French Rococo - achieves its best results when it forgets about specific models and looks for the logic of free forms. On the façades, the curve of its ornaments takes over the entire composition and, in this case, it even comes to configure a structural element such as the central tribune. The sculptural work on the ground floor fuses the vegetal decoration and the architectural profiling of the openings with a rougher treatment of the stone, simply roughened at the base of the façade. The convex base of the mezzanine windows is a resource that Sagnier will use in other works of the first decade of the century.
The lobby tempers this character a little, although there is no lack of ornamental work (on the iron railing, the sculptural details or the sgraffito on the wall) that was often given to these semi-public spaces.
Originally, the building did not have the current floors added. The tribune consisted of four levels that culminated in a cupule, on both sides of which ran a finial of florets. The fifth floor with low eaves and the last apartment are a sign of the densification of the city, although it should be appreciated that they respected the general character in the shapes of the openings and in the decoration.
The Fargas house is a good example of a late Modernist bourgeois apartment in the Eixample of Barcelona and, at the same time, of Enric Sagnier’s early work, an architect with a very extensive career.
The apartment buildings in the Eixample are stratified in height from the main one (on the ground floor), the owner's home, with apartments that decrease in rent and area for families with lower incomes. The Fargas house, three bays wide (three windows per floor facing the street) has a peculiarity: from the ground floor to the fourth one (the house has five floors on a semi-basement raised almost one floor above the street), the floors have the same façade. The main one is only marked by the union of the side balconies with the central tribune. On the rest of the floors, the balconies are individualised and receive wrought iron railings.
The tribune, in the centre of the house, has two curious features: the main one is that it is formed by the façade of the house, folded in on itself and pierced by a single bombed window, with an irregular, organic perimeter, with very elegant and vertical designer joinery. The second characteristic is that it is misaligned with respect to the access door, located against the right side of the façade, almost in the middle, to leave space for the development of the ground floor and the semi-basement.
The crowning is unique, based on a projected eaves on the two sides of the façade.
The ornamentation, treated with subtlety and mastery, consists of small decorative touches on the windows, the entrance door and the tribune.
The façade has been recently restored and is in a good state of preservation. The interior is private and cannot be visited.
