The first Gaudi building we went to was an apartment he built downtown. Sounds like a simple enough project, but with this guy, it’s not. The apartment was around five stories high, not nearly as high as Gaudi probably was when he designed this thing. Design is used loosely as apparently there were no plans made up, just a couple of sculptures and a few drawings. To make up for this Gaudi would spend most of his days in the street in front of the apartment directing the construction. The builders must have hated this, “Oh man, Gaudi’s here again and he’s gonna talk about the vision he has for this room, fuuuuuuck”
The apartment is quite something though, there are very few straight lines in the whole building. Every room, window and door has a soft edge making it all look a bit like a marshmallow. He went to great lengths to bring in the right amount of natural light and made sure that the light interacted well with the colours. He cared about function too, air circulation is top notch and the furniture was designed with comfort in mind, right down to the bannisters being “a delight to the senses”.
I’m always on the lookout for light/colour interaction and ergonomically correct bannisters when I apartment hunt, so Gaudi and I have a lot in common.
Parc Guell is a park in the sense that there’s trees and walking paths and stuff, but after that it’s not really all that practical. If you were throwing a frisbee around somebody would probably puncture their spleen on a wrought iron dragon spine that Gaudi had commissioned to liven up a boring bit.
The highlight of the park is the view of Barcelona, I loved standing at the top viewpoint and looking over the massive city, fast moving when you’re in the middle of things but slow when viewed from this distance, city buses crawling along narrow streets and planes queued up to land at the airport like an IV drip.
Gaudi’s house is at the entrance of the park too, a colouful place and even more bizarre than his downtown apartment as he wasn’t confined to the rectangular shapes of city architecture up here, his house looks like the Disney World castle made of wax and melting in the Mediterranean heat.
Construction on the Sagrada Familia started in 1882 when Gaudi was just 31 years old.
They’re still working on it today.
There have been some delays (civil wars, world wars, fires) but it's a project so massive it needs a ridiculous amount of time to be completed. Gaudi took all of his obsession with craftsmanship and detail and applied it to a project waaaay bigger than anything else he tried. On top of that, this is a religious monument and Gaudi, being a religious guy, pulled out all the stops in a way only a person of faith and a flair for the artistic can.
Despite the grandness, this was his work that held my attention the least. It’s impressive when first viewed, but I would recommend visiting the inside of one of Gaudi’s other works before the Sagrada Familia. A bit of background info and a walk around the outside is all that’s needed at the Sagrada Familia.
Perhaps I was just Gaudied out by this time ... but I think the religion of it bored me. When it comes down it (and this is very much an IMO) most religious monuments have the same feel: an artist humbled and less daring in the face of a higher power - their eyes are on the suffering aspects of religion and their overall goal is creating a somber space for prayer and reflection. Air circulation vents in the shape and format of fish gills? (as was found in the apartment) - that’s pretty cool. Building a house of worship, while noble and a labour of love, does not have the catch-all appeal of an apartment block.
Despite that, I loved sitting in the cathedral and listening to the sound of the construction outside, the incomplete structure is asking for peace but outside there is still work to be done, sounds like life.
Thanks to Sue for taking all the photos!