El Capricho, Gaudi

Photographed in collaboration with El Capricho de Gaudí, with access to the house before it opened to the public. Built between 1883 and 1885 for Máximo Díaz de Quijano — a musician and passionate collector of plants — El Capricho is one of Antoni Gaudí's earliest works, and one of the very few he built outside Catalonia. Gaudí designed it from Barcelona and is widely reported never to have visited Comillas; the work was directed on site by Cristóbal Cascante, from his plans and models. The house is organised around its own light. A U-shaped plan wraps a south-facing conservatory that warms through the day and releases its heat into the rooms at night, and the façade is banded with glazed sunflower tiles that turn the whole building towards the sun. Quijano died in 1885, the year it was completed, having barely lived in it. Working in the quiet before opening, I followed that logic rather than the floor plan: light moving through glass and ceramic, the ferns and palms of the conserv