Antoni Gaudí was born in Catalonia in 1852 and suffered rheumatism so severe as a child that he spent long stretches resting at the family summer home in Riudoms, studying plants, insects, and rocks and learning that nature solves structural problems without straight lines. He moved to Barcelona in 1870 to study architecture and took eight years to graduate, slowed by poor health, military service, and outside projects. In September 1905 developer Pere Milà and his wife Roser Segimon, a wealthy widow whose first husband made a fortune from a coffee plantation in Guatemala, hired him to build on the Passeig de Gràcia. Gaudí tore the old building down and designed a self-supporting stone facade tied to curved iron beams, freeing the interior walls.

In 1907 the city halted construction for exceeding height and size limits and threatened a 100,000 peseta fine. Cartoonists mocked the building, neighbors shunned the Milàs, and it earned the nickname La Pedrera, the stone quarry. After the Tragic Week riots, the owners cancelled Gaudí’s Virgin Mary statue for the roof, and a priest had to persuade him to stay. He sued for his fees, and after his death by tram in 1926, Segimon covered his ceilings in Louis XVI plaster.

• Courtyard supports that work like a bicycle wheel, balancing tension and compression
• An attic of 270 parabolic brick arches using the Catalan vault technique
• Removing a pillar so a tenant named Felix could turn his new Rolls-Royce into the underground garage
• Telling Segimon to play the violin when she found no straight wall for her Steinway piano
• Winning 105,000 pesetas in 1916 and donating it all to charity, and the 1984 UNESCO listing after years as offices and a bingo hall