The Avinguda del Tibidabo is the main street of the urban development promoted at the start of the 20th century by the pharmaceuticals magnate Salvador Andreu and based on the concept of the garden city. It consisted of an estate of luxurious detached houses in the salutary environment of the Sierra de Collserola. The Tramvia Blau, or Blue Tram, which still operates to this day, runs the length of the avenue and facilitates access to the summit, where an amusement park was constructed. In this area, Sagnier built at least eight houses. Buildings of this type allowed the architect considerable freedom in deciding the distribution of the rooms: detached houses located on large plots without the restrictions imposed by an urban location in a street contiguous with neighbouring buildings, and with very varied usage of internal space, offered the chance to experiment with many variant floor plans, generally on the basis of grouping rooms around a large central space, communicating directly with the main entrance and with a staircase leading to the upper floors.

The house for Ignasi Coll uses a Classicist formal repertoire, individualised by decorative motifs from Spanish Plateresque architecture, and the interior decoration is similarly rich; but its most outstanding characteristic is the use of reinforced concrete in the construction, a material that was beginning to be used in civil architecture. For all these reasons, the house won one of the prizes awarded annually by Barcelona city council.