Edible Architecture: Modernista Architecture in Barcelona - Part 2
“Gentleman, we are here today either in the presence of a genius or a madman,” declared Elías Rogent, director of Barcelona’s architectural school, as Antoni Gaudí i Cornet passed his final project and qualified as an architect in 1878.
How do you encapsulate the duality of the above statement in a journal post? You don’t. If you want a complete understanding of the man and architect, I recommend Gils Van Hensbergen’s Gaudí biography. This sketch is merely an attempt to highlight aspects of his life and work that led to the creation of some of his most enduring buildings.
Gaudí was born in 1852 in Reus, Catalonia. In his father’s workshop, he learned the coppersmith’s trade and gained early experience molding material to suit his aesthetic vision. His family recognized his artistic skills and in 1868 sent him to school in Barcelona, where he lived in the Born neighborhood—at the time a step above a slum. He enrolled in architecture school in 1874, and whether madman or genius, he was a certified as an architect. He quickly gained notice, and perhaps even some rivals, within the architectural community as some members of the certifying panel voted against him qualifying.
Antoni Gaudí, 1878 by Pau Audouard Deglaire
Photo source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=946994
While his professional path ascended, his personal journey was rockier. In 1876, while he was still in architecture school, his older brother died at only age 25, followed two months later by his mother. His only sister died in 1879, leaving a young niece for whom Gaudí cared the remainder of her life. Before age 30, he became a confirmed bachelor after two failed romances, perhaps directing any latent desire and passion into his buildings. His “denial of the flesh” and somewhat ascetic lifestyle coincided with his increasing religiosity, a devotion to God and the Catholic Church so strong that he almost starved himself to death during a Lenten fast.
Gaudí disliked the term modernista and did not want to be identified with it. The Church condemned the term and the movement as too progressive, irreconcilable with Church doctrine. Gaudí also associated the movement with an amoral bohemianism. With friends, he formed El Cercle de Sant Lluc (Circle of Saint Luke) to set an example for moral rectitude. He found modern architecture too eclectic and wanted his architecture to be more rational and logical, overlaid with a moral and pious philosophy. He was chiefly inspired by Gothic architecture but he developed his own individualistic architectural vocabulary that transcended Gothic—He applied naturalistic, expressionistic decoration particularly in his post-1900 works, designs that some observers could understanding (and ironically) label eclectic.
Influenced by William Morris’s call to preserve medieval buildings, many of Gaudí’s earliest projects involved restoration of medieval churches and monasteries. Given his devotion to the Church and to the Gothic, it is not entirely surprising that in 1882, early in his career, he received a commission to finish the design for the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family.
La Sagrada Familia – 1882 - 1926
La Sagrada Familia started in 1874 as a church and school complex for the Associació Espiritual des Devots de Sant Josep with Gothic Revival plans drawn by Francisco de Paula del Villar. Disagreements with the builder led Paula del Villar to resign and the Associació hired Gaudí hired to lead the project. He inherited a typical cruciform Gothic-style church and initially followed Paula del Villar’s plans. By 1887 he completed the original crypt. From 1891-93 he built the apse and ambulatory in Gothic Revival but altered from original design. From that point he embarked on his own vision.
He soon drew up plans for an enormous complex that was never built. The current church is only a fraction of his vision which was meant to have 18 towers (there are eight) with a central dome and spire reaching to 178 meters. The stalactite-like towers had openings meant to allow airflow for wind-activated bells. The façades of each transept were didactic representations of the Nativity, the Passion and the Resurrection. Because bronze and wrought iron would add too much to an already enormous budget, Gaudí had to express his visual sermon in stone. Built from 1903-30, the Nativity façade was the only one completed during Gaudí’s lifetime.
Passion façade, La Sagrada Familia 1882 to present
For such an enormous building, Gaudí obsessed on the details to an extraordinary extent. He wanted the sculpture and nature-inspired decorative elements to be as realistic as possible. He modeled the stone figures first in plaster in his studio using various methods and forms: casts of humans and animals (alive or dead), posing skeletons, and drawing live models. Sometimes the model stood among mirrors allowing Gaudí to view all angles at once. On the site, he would have workers haul sculptures into place so he could judge them and pull them down again if not satisfied. The results were human tableaux representing scenes of the Nativity surrounded by an abundance of animals, sea life, and flora drawn from Catalonia’s habitats.
Gaudí’s secular work began flourishing in the early 1880s when tile manufacturer Dom Manuel Vicens Montaner commissioned a city house and Dom Eusebi Güell hired Gaudí for the first—and far from last—time. Gaudí was able to start his own studio, adding assistants and recruiting a cadre of artists and craftsmen, such as sculptors José María Jujol and Llorenç Matamala , who helped realize many of his designs. Güell, a wealthy dandy, textile manufacturer, and devout Catholic, became Gaudí’s primary patron, with the architect working for him continuously until Güell’s death. Their visionary projects ranged from homes to chapels to an industrial village to a garden suburb.
Park Güell
In 1900, Eusebi Güell asked Gaudí to create a design for a garden suburb using English garden cities like Bedford Park as a model, even using the English spelling. It would have collective services like streets, a market, a common square, and lighting in addition to 32 homes. The plot, north of Eixample, was highly uneven so Gaudí attempted to maintain as much of the natural contour as possible while preparing a usable building site. They began the project by building some of the common amenities. The main entrance is flanked by the porter’s lodge and a services building. The Chamber of the Hundred Columns (actually only 96) was meant to be the market and supports the common square above with each column carrying rainwater to a cistern. José María Jujol created the mosaic disks in the market and on the curvaceous bench in the square using various found objects and broken ceramics, a technique called trencadis.
Benches, Park Guëll 1900 - 1914 José María Jujol
Park Güell was ahead of its time in design and commercially, being too far from central Barcelona to attract buyers. Only 2 houses were built, one for Gaudí’s father and niece which was designed by Francesc Berenguer, an assistant in Gaudí’s studio. The city bought the park in 1922 and turned it into a public park.
Like the upper classes everywhere, wealthy and powerful Barcelona residents wanted what their neighbors had. In 1901, textile manufacturer Josep Batlló Casanovas filed for city permission to demolish his large but ordinary house on Passeig de Gracía. He was watching his neighbor build Casa Amatller with modernista architect Josep Puig. He took the advice of his friend Pere Milà i Camps and hired Gaudí as the architect who could execute a highly original design. Gaudí did not demolish the building but retrofitted the interiors and applied his sculpted, multi-colored interpretation of St. George and the Dragon to the existing façade. Meanwhile Milà was looking for the right property for which he could engage Gaudí. Milà was a politician, publisher, and property developer who was also savvy enough to marry a rich widow in 1903. She bought him a prime corner of the Passeig de Gracía in 1905. They knocked the building to the ground and gave Gaudí a blank slate for one of his greatest creations.
Casa Milà - La Pedrera
Like Casa Batlló, Casa Milà was a residence and an apartment building. Pere Milà knew that Gaudí was expensive and exacting. He was known to order workers to tear out anything he didn’t like and rebuild. Yet Milà gave him carte blanche.
Architectural historians argue over Gaudí’s inspiration, variously citing mountains and ranges around Spain and the Balearic Islands. Montserrat, the nearby mountain and monastery, is a prime candidate. Regardless of the source, the rolling exterior looks like a stony mountainside with bushes (balconies) growing from crevices and a cloud-like mass crowning the roofline. When Barcelonans first saw the finished building, they christened it La Pedrera, the quarry. The curvaceous exterior extends to the interior spaces and the internal courtyards. A French gallery owner once contemplated opening a space there but gave up for want of a flat wall on which to hang art.
Casa Milà 1906 - 1912
Originally the roof was meant to be a pedestal for a large statue of the Virgin, but the owners disliked the design. Gaudí instead transformed the chimneys and vents into an abstract sculpture garden. The building was nearly ruined soon after completion by a city bureaucrat who ruled that it did not meet building regulations and must be altered. Pere Milà appealed to the city council which wisely overruled the decision.
In his last two decades, Gaudí’s life continuously narrowed until it solely focused on his work and his faith. In 1906, he moved into the Park Güell home he built for his father and niece. His ailing father died later the same year. His niece, a chronically-ill alcoholic, died in 1912. When Eusebi Güell died in 1918, Gaudí’s secular work stopped. La Sagrada Familia was his all-consuming passion project, for which he would occasionally go into the streets asking passersby for donations to continue the construction. He eventually left the Park Güell house and moved into his work studio. By the 1920s, his life followed a simple pattern: morning mass, work at La Sagrada Familia, confession with his spiritual advisor, and home to bed. On a June evening in 1926, he set off to see his confessor. Perhaps while he was not paying attention, a city tram car hit him. Because of his disheveled appearance, the driver would later report that he had hit a tramp. The “tramp” was left in the street where several good Samaritans, not recognizing the famous architect, helped get him to a hospital. Several friends later found him at the hospital and moved him to a private room. His injuries were fatal and he died three days later. Days later, with his body dressed in a monk’s habit, a cortege made its way through crowds of thousands to La Sagrada Familia where Gaudí was laid to rest in the crypt that he built.
In his day, Gaudí was hailed by contemporary architects such as Le Corbusier. Yet, like so many architectural movements, the harshest critics are the next generation who wish to replace older buildings with their vision of modernity. By the 1930s in Barcelona, writers, art critics, and historians advocated the alteration or destruction of modernista buildings. Writer Josep Pla argued for the removal of all of the ornament from the Palau de la Música Catalana. The Palau Guëll was almost purchased, dismantled, and moved to the United States. Fortunately, while some buildings were irrevocably altered, wholesale demolition never happened. Artist Salvador Dalí was one of first to call for appreciation and preservation of the style that he called “edible architecture.” In 1952 a major exhibition of Antoni Gaudí’s work took place in New York and cemented his reputation, a reputation which has only grown in the nearly 100 years since his death.