Barcelona 2: Gaudí

I have a new love in my life, and it is a buncha dumb rocks that got built into buildings by Antoni Gaudí. After the jump: photos and ramblings about this remarkable, on-of-a-kind dude!

Sagrada Familia, down the block from my AirBnB and still under construction 100 years after it began...

I knew that Gaudí was one of the major draws to Barcelona - any time you have an adjective drawn from your name, you're probably worth paying some attention to - but as with most things in the city, I sort of half-knew and half-shrugged about it. I was struck by his major work - still incomplete - as I came off the Metro stop to my AirBnB late the night that I arrived. Sagrada Familia, about 130 years in the making and still at least a decade to go, is a sprawling and busy and ardent piece of architecture. Even from the outside, the facade is dense with figuration and muscular verticality. I'd make my way in later in the trip, but first I'd visit Casa Batlló and Parc Guell...

Casa Batlló from the street

One of the more remarkable things about Gaudi's work is getting to see what happens when an architect is given the time and money to attend to quite literally every detail: staircase banisters to ventilation openings, they're all touched by his aquatic/sinewy/romantic-vision-of-nature vision

FOR INSTANCE: This is what a staircase can look like if you really decide to care about how you design your staircase. Swoon.

The view from a mid-level terrace. Gaudi's also huge on mosaic work, especially as it allows him to do more in the curved lines that he likes to play with. 

I have an overhead lamp in my apartment but it does not look as cool as this. Stupid non-Gaudi lamp.

The view onto the street from these living rooms is remarkable, but what I especially love is how the light changes over the course of the day as it hits various parts of the stained glass. He uses this incredibly well in Sagrada Familia.

The view up the atrium; Gaudi adjusted scale of the ornamentation so it would look the same from multiple vantage points, and adjusted the opacity and tinting of various windows so that the light would feel similar all the way up and down. He was a smart cat. 

I mean, this is how Gaudi did chimneys. How can you not love that? (Or how can you not love him framing a cathedral in between smokestacks?)

Gaudi's other major central house was closed for renovatios when I visited, but I'm told that it has full-on dragon sculptures on top; he likes him those curving lines. Also note the cross: Gaudi was super devout, to the extent that he quit another design project (almost near its completion) when his patron told him he didn't want a sculpture of the Virgin Mary on his rooftop.

 Parc Guell:

LANDSCAPING. Gaudi draws a ton of his inspiration from nature - it's why he hates straight lines, and why his colors are so vibrant and varied - and it's kind of gorgeous to see what he does in terms of landscaping the existing nature. This project was designed as a kind of private development, until not enough people bought in and it became a public park. Now major sections of it are cordoned off for paying customers (mostly because it was so overrun) and it's a bit of a hybrid public-space/paid tourist site.

The candyland-looking paid section of Parc Guell. Look at those crazy rooflines! What a cool spot.

The main steps of Parc Guell. I just love the wild imagination and joy of design here.

I got back to Sagrada Familia on my penultimate day in Barcelona, and went inside. This isn't a small thing - all of Gaudi's buildings have steep (€20+) entrance fees - but given how much detail he lavished on the interior of these places, I have to say I didn't regret a single visit. When I get back to Barcelona (someday!) I'm hoping to catch a few more of his places, as well as doing more Dali exploration (he has an amazing museum outside of town that I didn't make it to this trip).

Sagrada Familia is ecstatic; I don't know how else to describe it. Soaring vertical lines, a forest-like canopy bathed in light whose color changes as the sun moves across the stained glass panels, it's one of the more inspiring physical spaces I've ever occupied. In part this is also, I think, because it's of a scale and ambition that we just don't have any more - when you spend time in Notre Dame you're floored by the fact that multiple generations of builders and architects worked on the cathedral knowing they would not live to see it finished, and Sagrada Familia is very much on its way to the same thing. The building is scheduled to be finished in 2026, for the centenary of Gaudi's death, but... even if we don't see a global financial crisis again, that's a rather optimistic estimate. I would love to return when it's completed... or maybe even before then. Here, some photos to close out this account of Barcelona, a city that completely swept me off my feet.

The Nativity facade. This is Gaudí in all his glory (minus the color), wild ornamentation that coheres into a glorious whole. It's really kind of outrageous that his name became the pejorative adjective "gaudy," because his work feels tremendously grounded to me. Busy, ornate, stuffed-to-the-gills... but beautiful and weighty and mindful all the same.

It's incredibly hard to get a sense of the building's scale. This is one of many attempts to do it with a panoramic shot but... bleh!

One of the many panels of stained glass.

Again just a very faint attempt to capture the raw heaven-reaching pull of the architecture.

Any Gaudí building, but especially the Sagrada Familia, it's a good idea to look up - to look for all the details he's packed into the place.

The Nave, with its tree-trunk columns. 

Services these days take place in the more-Gothic-seeming crypt, leaving the cathedral itself open to visitors.

Okay, if there's one detail that's probably over the top it's this umbrella crucifix sculpture. But in context, in the light and the airiness of the space... it just feels of a piece with the whole.

Again just a hint (I think this comes through more clearly in the video) of the wash of colored light with which the sun bathes the space. It's an incredibly calming, lifting space.

The Lord's Prayer in Catalan. Many other languages underneath.

Jesus Gracies - I love the linguistic focus of all the doors to the space.

The Crucifixion Facade. Controversially, this facade's design was taken up by a twentieth-century architect whose style completely differs from Gaudi's - but that was apparently part of Gaudi's vision, to have future details given his level of attention but molded to other architect's visions. And really, if you want to apply a kind of Soviet Realism blocky form of figuration to any narrative, the crucifixion is not a bad place to go.

One last glimpse from the feet of the building, next to the school Gaudi designed (which you can see early in the video). Oh man I cannot wait to see what this thing looks like when finished.

This weekend I hope to have one more post up on a few folk I met along the way on this trip, and then maybe things will be quiet around here until my spring break travels (London and Paris! Closing out what's likely to be my last window of luxurious "school break" scheduling for a couple of years by revisiting the great staples). Or maybe I'll blather about other things! There is literally no way to know what is going to happen. Til then: keep being kind to people and looking out for the people who need it!