Gaudi’s Barcelona

Posted on 21. Mar, 2009 by Kerry Banks in People

It is the destiny of great cities to possess one landmark structure that personifies the place’s spirit and identity. In London, it is Big Ben; in Paris, it is the Eiffel Tower. Barcleona’s cultural icon is called Templo de la Sagrada Familia (Temple of the Holy Family). This strange and unforgettable landmark was conceived as nothing short of a Bible in stone. Of the millions of tourists who visit the city annually, more than a third come specifically to view this extraordinary basilica, which remains half-finished after more than a century of construction. Whether one prefers to view it as a ruin or a work-in-progress, its visual impact is undimished, inspiring a mixture of awe and astonishment.

The cathedral’s size alone is startling. Eight spires rise like celestial billiard cues to a height of more than 90 metres. The massive stone walls are pimpled, creased and curled like the contours of some great mutant sandcastle. The main façade, dedicated to the theme of the nativity, is riddled with biblical sculptures life-cast from pelicans. tortoises, still-born children, and the rag and bone merchants of Barcelona’s slums. At night, illuminated by banks of pale blue lights, the entire structure appears to be melting.

La Sagrada Familia is the masterpiece of architect Antonio Gaudi, one of the most creative and enigmatic artists the world has ever seen. Revered by the Spanish as a combination of wizard and a saint, Gaudi was a frail, rheumatic man who never married and lived most of his life with his father and orphaned niece. His most striking features were a pair of piercing blue eyes and what one contemporary described as a “luminous half-laugh.” Disdainful of wealth or publicity, Gaudi never gave a single lecture or wrote an article or book. Three beliefs sustained his life–a belief in architecture, in a Christian god and in Catalonia, the region of Spain where he was born in 1852 and from which he scarcely stirred during his 74 years on the planet.

Virtually all of Gaudi’s major works can be found in Barcelona, offering tourists a compact record of a career characterized by boundless creative energy. Much of Gaudi’s early career was spent designing opulent and eclectic homes for wealthy patrons. With its fretted facade of rubble stone and pink brick, floral ceramic tiles and spiky iron-cast railings, Casa Vicens affords visitors a good introduction to the Gaudi’s talent for joining the sensuous and organic to the cool, disciplined logic of geometry.

Casa Battlo and Casda Mila, two residences located with in a few blocks of one another on Paseo de Gracia, showcase Gaudi’s secular styling at its most accomplished. Casa Battlo, built for a wealthy textile manufacturer, is nothing short of jewelry on a grand scale. The iridescent blue tiles of the faced resemble the bubbly surface of a wave breaking over a beach. Casa Mila, is a very peculiar-looking six-storey apartment whose hammered and pitted stone facade lends it the appearance of a liquefied mountain. Know to locals as La Pedreda (the Quarry), its undulating roll of individual floors has been likened to everything from cave dwellings to hornets’ nests.

Unfortunately, both Casa Battlo and Casa Mila are private residences, and many of their most intriguing features—curling staircases, vertical courtyards and Alice in Wonderland rooftops—remain hidden from public view. Lack of accessibility, however, is not a problem with Park Guell, Gaudi’s most ambitious undertaking after La Sagarda Familia. The park, which is located at the north end of town, was originally conceived as a suburban real estate development by its financier, Count Eusebio Guell, who hired Gaudi to design a garden city for 60 families. But only two of the houses sold, one of which Gaudi bought. After Guell’s death, the property passed to the city and has since become a successful public park.

Gaudi’s intention here was to be bizarre and playful on one hand, while producing architecture that could serve as a compliment to nature. The result is a hallucinatory expression of the imagination with giant decorative lizards and a tilting Hall of Columns. One Spanish writer described it as “at once a fun fair, a pertrified forest and the great temple of Amun at Karnak, itself drunk and reeling in an eccentric earthquake.” The park pavilions, which were designed by Gaudí, seem to be taken out of Hansel and Gretel, with curved roofs covered with brightly coloured tiles and ornamented spires. The staircase at the entrance of the park is also designed by Gaudí. The dragon-like lizard at the centre of the ceramic-decorated staircase is the best known symbol of the park, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1984. A connecting flight of stairs leads to another famous feature of the park: the Gran Placa Circular. Originally intended as a market place for the residents, this plaza is bordered by what is known as the largest bench in the world. The colourful ceramic serpentine bench twists around the plaza. The view from the plaza is spectacular; one can see as far as the Mediterranean Sea. The whole platform is supported by 86 huge columns, creating a hall beneath the plaza.

As Gaudi aged, he became increasingly eccentric and religious. In 1914, in retreat from the world, he chose to devote himself completely to La Sagrada Familia, living on the site in a simple workman’s hut. His work on the cathedral had actually begun 31 years earlier and had continued sporadically, dependent upon the public donations that financed its construction and on other architectural commitments. Gaudi never intended the project to be finished in his lifetime. Like the medieval cathedrals, it was to be the work of generations. “My client is in no rush,” he once said. After Gaudi’s death in a street car accident in 1926, work proceeded under a group of close collaborators, people who could be trusted to faithfully translate the master’s ideas. However, construction was halted at the onset of the Spanish Civil War in 1935. During the conflict, fire gutted the building and the models and blueprints in Gaudi’s studio were destroyed. This has made it very difficult for workers to complete the cathedral in the same fashion as Gaudi most likely would have wished.

Today, the construction continues amid much controversy. Some contend that a new generation of craftsmen, unacquainted with Gaudi’s spirit, cannot possibly hope to do justice to his original vision, and that the work should be stopped. Others feel that the rather than being confined to a facsimile of what Gaudi might have done, the design ought to be widened to include modern flourishes. The debate continues to rage, even as city officials have targeted a completion date of 2026 for the cathedral, which will mark the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death.

Photo Credits:

#1: barcelonapictures.blogspot.com

#2: gaudidesigner.com

#3: spanishjourneys.com

#4: baldheretic.com

#5: coined-spain.org

Tags: Antonio Gaudi, Barcelona