Jujol And The House Of Eggs

Its harmonious asymmetry made me think of the traditional Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, particularly one of my favorite books: Hideyuke Oka's How To Wrap Five Eggs (1965).  How curious then to find that the this house has a nickname: 'The House of Eggs.'

Josef Maria Jujol  (1878-1949) was born in the school building where his father taught school in Tarragona, a Catalan city on the Mediterranean coast, near the border with France. Dating back to at least Roman times, Tarragona was punctuated by its  stone remains.  The Jujol family moved to Barcelona in 1888, where Josef  studied at the School of Architecture under Antoni Gaudi and its director Lluis Domenech i Montaner, giants of the Spanish modernista movement, addressing  what the movement saw as the crisis of classical architecture.  Outside Spain, Gaudi's name is the familiar one, and Jujol colloborated with Gaudi on several projects.  Jujol is widely credited with executing much of the mosaic work for the famous serpentine benches of the Parc Guell.

What keeps Jujol's work fresh today is that he found his metier in designing homes for clients of modest means and in renovating buildings, not as historic preservation but  as opportunities for innovative redesign. While creating fully detached single homes was a goal of 20th century planning, in Jujol, Gaudi's idea of construction as the creation of controversy was tempered by the idea of the home as a manifestation of uplift and faith in transcendental values.

Jujol built his first house in 1909 and in 1913, his aunt Dona Josefa Romeu commissioned a vacation home, Torre de la Creu, in Sant Joan Despi that took three years to complete and soon acquired the nickname Casa dels Ous or 'House of Egg'. 

The house comprises two separate flats that share a common entrance and a small garden. Jujol superimposed five cylinder-shaped towers (the torre) that thwart our expectation of symmetry in a duplex; three for rooms and two for staircases leading up to the roof.  From his work with Gaudi Jujol adapted ceramic brick to effect, combining it with the more economical stucco.  Unlike Gaudi, he made his sgraffito designs on smooth surfaces.  The loops, rings and knotted shapes  he shaped in ironwork accent the cylinders and meander charmingly at the same time.

The spiral staircase is a marvel of lightness, with concealed windows and skylights, encouraging a trip to the roof.  There the architect provided an elevated balcony for viewing the city and the sea and a pavilion, suited to private pursuits, with protection from the sun.  The architect Jujol has no obvious successors but his work is ready to inspire.

Images: photographs by Melba Levick for Jujol, by Ignasi de Solo-Morales Rubio, published by Rizzoli International: 1991, except for 1. Torre de la Creu  photographed by Didac Lopez, Andorra. 

 2. - lower part of a iving room.  3. - upward view of roof towers.  4. - spiral staircase.  5. - Steps to a balcony.  6. - roof pavillon.

You may also be interested in Gaspar Homar: The Circle Dance ( posted here 08/07/2010),

Anglada Camarasa: An Artist From Barcelona  (01/29/2010),

Art In Everything: Adevrtising The Good Life (09/15/2008).