Carrer de la Cooperativa, 47
Did you know that the Nau Gaudí is the first building made by the modernist architect Antoni Gaudí?
The building was an order from Salvador Pagès, a textile industrialist and one of the most prominent leaders of the cooperative movement in Catalonia, to his friend the young architect Antoni Gaudí, who had recently graduated and agreed to carry out the project altruistically because he shared the same ideas.
It is an industrial building intended for bleaching cotton. The project, conceived between 1878 and 1883, on paper and in the minds of the cooperativists, was very large. The plan was for a new workers ‘city in Mataró, but in the end only the bleaching warehouse, the latrines, the porter’s lodge, the scales, two or three of the workers’ houses and the banner of the La Obrera Mataronense society were built. Today only the warehouse and latrines are preserved and can be visited, and the structure that crowned the banner, a symbol of work and industry, which is on display at Can Serra Museum in Mataró.
It is a key construction because it was here where the architect experimented with parabolic arches as structural elements and developed the formulas that would later be used to design the attics of the Pedrera building or the famous model of the church and Colonia Güell.
It now houses the Bassat collection, which is one of the most representative collections of Catalan art from the second half of the 20th century. Since its inception in 1973, the collection has continued to grow, gathering works by internationally renowned artists and recovering the names of lesser-known figures in order to vindicate their work and recognise their careers.
