Location: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Architect: Antoni Gaudí
Completed: 1882 - Ongoing
12 Photographs
“There is no reason to regret that I cannot finish the church. I will grow old but others will come after me. What must always be conserved is the spirit of the work, but its life has to depend on the generations it is handed down to and with whom it lives and is incarnated.” – AG (the OG)
Architectural history has a kind of progressive order, or neatness, to it. You can usually trace the overlapping strands of building technology and style across the ages, like mapping a river system. Architects and buildings fit somewhere along the map, usually with recent forebearers, and the successful ones usually have future generations following neatly after. Antoní Gaudi has never really fitted into this pattern. His architectural precedents were primarily from the natural world, and his architectural descendants followed mostly almost a century behind. Of contemporaries, he had few, true peers none.
The Basílica Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família is not just Gaudi’s masterwork, it is in some ways the masterwork. In the tradition of European cathedrals that took centuries to build, it is perhaps the last of its kind. I have never claimed to be an architectural historian or critic of any kind, but it seems to my untutored eye, to be the culmination of more than a thousand years of religious building tradition.
Along with the other architectural classic resident of the Catalan capital, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s ‘Barcelona Pavilion’, this was one of the first buildings I visited in Europe after studying architecture. The main purpose of the trip to Barcelona was to see these two buildings and to experience this legendary city, about which I knew little of substance beyond the architectural highlights.
That first time that I walked through the streets of Barcelona to visit the Sagrada Familia, I recall an overwhelming sense of excitement about what was to come. I have always loved construction sites and this was the most famous of them all. An extraordinary building being built under extraordinary circumstances. While much of the façade and its celebrated stone friezes were in place, the main hall was full of scaffolding, few of the windows were in and it was hard to get a sense of the space. While the genius and grandeur were undeniable, wandering up and down what was something of a skeleton at the time, you had to close your eyes and get a glimpse of this thing that was to come. I noted to myself to return at intervals over the years and watch construction progress unfold.
The building story is as fascinating as the architecture and it has been controversial for almost as long a time as it has been under construction. Much has been said over the years, since the restarting of construction, about the necessary compromise and inevitable dilution of Gaudi’s vision, but I am rather less bothered by all this, feeling like Gaudi knew enough to know that it would not be entirely his and his alone. To me, it is a unique building, unparalleled in its richness of detail and grandeur, most of which is impossible to replicate in photos, much less my own.
I have been to Barcelona several times since and it is a city that has changed a lot over the years with all the tick-tack and artificial life that goes with an influx of mass tourism, and no part has been more over-run than the stairways, floors and spires of the unfinished masterpiece in the Eixample, once on the outskirts of town.
Each time I return to Barcelona, there is always something to enjoy, a previously undiscovered gem of some delight or another, a sample of one or two of the many things about Barcelona which are unique and wonderful, or just another trip down to the construction site to check on progress.
HWLK