Pere Vila, Casa de les Pedres / House of stones

images are screenprints 2024 from Google Streetview

The house in the picture above, fully decorated with shells, is located along a street called Avinguda de la Diputació in the Spanish city Manlleu with some 20.000 inhabitants (2018) and about 80 km north of the town of Barcelona.

The rather industrialized community is located along the River Ter, which rises in the eastern Pyrenees and flows into the Mediterranean Sea after about 200 km.

Life and works

The building, colloquially called Casa de les Pedres (House of stones), was built by Pere Vila Farrés, who was born in 1927.

As a boy, he assisted his parents with renovations and at the age of seventeen he went to help a mason who came to do a job in the family home. He did this so well that he was employed by the mason, with whom he worked for some fifteen years

Then for thirty years he had a job in a metal factory.

In 1957, when he was thirty, Pere Vila got married. The couple would have children.

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In his spare time, with his own hands he accomplished a building along the Avenue Diputació, a construction that included two houses, one for him and his wife and the other one for a descendant. 

It was a major project, because the two houses were built on land that in the past was sometimes flooded by the nearby river Ter and therefore the building had to rest on a solid foundation, which he also made himself.

Pere Vila retired in 1990, when he was 63. He also retired because he wanted to undertake activities he really liked. For him that included both catching fish in the nearby river and decorating his house, using pebbles that he could collect during or after fishing.

It became a decorative project with a number of componentes, which are described below

Decorations on the front wall and on the roof

As can be seen in the first two photos above, the facades of the two houses along Avenue Diputació are almost entirely decorated with pebbles, this with the exception of a flag with yellow and red stripes.

On the roof there are six bell towers and some sculptures of people.

Decorations on the wall in the side street

On the left corner of the front of the house, a side street begins called Battle Pau Caballeria. Other than the front of the building, the side wall along this street has a variety of decorations.

In articles reviewing this art environment, it is mentioned that the decoration of this wall consists largely of lines, reminiscent of rivers and roads, a large whole interrupted by smaller items.

It is difficult to see in the image above, but on the left side of the wall there is indeed a line work that develops from bottom to top and can be interpreted in many ways.

In the images around it can be seen that the side wall, in addition to the line work, also includes smaller creations, such as above a representation of a small house and bottom right a scene of building with a small tower, representing a small church or a small castle.

Such small creations are spread across the entire side wall, in all kinds of designs.

To round off this part about decorations on the wall in the side street, above is another image of the right corner of the wall in the side street, where a small cage manifests a probably special person, flanked on the left by a round dish with something like two bunches of grapes.

Decorations in the garden

 

Beyond the side wall in the side street begins the backyard of Pere Vila's building, separated from the street by an iron fence supported by large round stone pillars.

The image above also shows, adjacent to the fence, a sculpture consisting of a number of towers, as enlarged in the image below.

The rear walls of the two houses, bordering the garden, are almost entirely decorated with shells, with the exception of a small vertical strip on one of the rear walls, which is decorated with an extensive series of small colourful items, which appear to depict heraldic themes.

In the Catalonian newspaper EL9NOU there is a photo, dated November 2023, showing Pere Vila sitting against the back of the house, surrounded by replicas of internationally known creations, such as the Eiffel Tower, Gaudí's Sagrada Família and other cathedrals. 

However, on Google Streetview from July 2024 these cathedrals are difficult to distinguish.

Back of the garden

At the back of the garden, bordering the Carrer Batlle Pau Caballeria, there is a small building that is used as a garage. Apart from the entrance door, this building is also lavishly decorated, albeit with somewhat smaller shells.

The images are also somewhat smaller. They mainly relate to means of transport, such as an airplane, a car, a bus, a boat or a hot air balloon.

There is also an image of Halley's comet, which was visible in the eighties.

detail of the garage wall

Per Vila stopped working on his extensive project when COVID broke out in Spain in January 2020. He was already in poor health at that time and he passed away on February 16, 2025

Documentation

* Article (Februari 2025) on website Rondaller, with a variety of photos, also of the interior of Vila's house.

* Article in Jo Farb Hernàndez' book Singular Spaces II, 5 Continents Editions. 2023

Pere Vila

Casa de les Pedres

Avenue Diputació 86 and 88

Manlleu,  dept of Barcelona, region Catalonia, Spain

can be seen from the street

Google Streetview