Casa Milà/La Pedrera • Location: Barcelona, Spain • Developer: Pere Milà i Camps • Architect: Antoni Gaudi • Notable: Containing not one straight wall or right angle, La Pedrera (“The Quarry”) seems to have been molded rather than built, both inside and out. The building, constructed from 1906 to 1912, was the first in Europe to include an underground parking garage. It is now a museum.
iStock Casa Milà/La Pedrera • Location: Barcelona, Spain • Developer: Pere Milà i Camps • Architect: Antoni Gaudi • Notable: Containing not one straight wall or right angle, La Pedrera (“The Quarry”) seems to have been molded rather than built, both inside and out. The building, constructed from 1906 to 1912, was the first in Europe to include an underground parking garage. It is now a museum.

Casa Milà, better known as La Pedrera due to its rocky ­appearance, uses multiple solutions of controlled ­geometry, as well as naturalist elements. It has a structure built of stone, solid brick, and metallic beams that releases the façade from load-bearing functions, which allows large amounts of light and air to enter. Even today, any partition can be knocked down without affecting the building’s structural integrity. This residential building is an exhibition of living architecture in which the undulation of stone transforms weight into airiness, solidity into movement, and the ­inert into the organic. What makes Casa Milà a landmark building is that its ­architectural expression is as timeless today as [it was] the day it was built.

R. Scott Ziegler, Founding Principal, Ziegler Cooper Architects, Houston
R. Scott Ziegler, Founding Principal, Ziegler Cooper Architects, Houston

— R. Scott Ziegler, founding principal, Ziegler Cooper Architects, Houston