Bizzarchitecture – Antoni Gaudi
Antoni Gaudi is one of my favorite architects, and I find though people have occasionally heard the name in passing, they don’t always know what he was all about. He’s most famous in his hometown of Barcelona in Spain, where the vast majority of his works can be found.
Though often considered part of the Art Nouveau movement, I heard the term “bizzarchitecture” the other day and found it to be perfectly fitting. His works are known for pushing the boundaries, for turning the everyday object (such as a chimney) into a fanciful illusion (such as a mask-like face). Perhaps his seminal work is the Sagrada Familia, an enormous cathedral in the heart of Barcelona. It has been continually worked on since his death in 1926. It is the only grand cathedral in the world that is being built in our lifetimes, and it is possibly the last. I always felt a great sense of awe when viewing this building, to see something so vast and know that you won’t live long enough to see it completed. The project has been plagued with problems, mostly funding-related, since its inception, but it seems that they are predicting the main part of the cathedral to be completed very soon. It is so shockingly tall now, and then you find out that the last piece of the puzzle, the icing on the cake, is another layer of tower that will at least double the existing building in height. It’s amazing to think of such a thing being so tall not being built out of modern materials like steel in glass but instead stone. I think that it is a testament to his incredible building that the work continues in his (mostly) original vision.
I think that he really shows his Spanish background by incorporating tile into his design. Far more interesting than the traditional Spanish tile designs (which are in themselves stunning) he relied on the centuries of tile production the region to find castoffs, break them down and turn them into these wonderfully intricate, colorful, mosaics. The scale of these is just astounding – 12 foot tall chimneys, entire ROOMS. Instead of using paint to create the interiors, this mosaic tile creates a sense of depth that is otherwise unachievable. Plus, he was an early recycler! It’s inspiring to see waste turned into beauty on such a large and widely accepted scale.
The intricacy of his designs weren’t just limited to tile work. He built entire buildings that lacked a single right angle (!). The fronts of his apartment buildings often featured fanciful motifs, such as skulls and bones. Often times balconies would look like masks or faces, whole buildings taking on the image of something more sinister, but also delightfully wicked. What I find most compelling about his work is that no detail was overlooked, no element so small as to not deserve a special treatment of it’s own. He’s like Tim Burton in that way – he created entire worlds according to his singular vision. What’s most shocking about his work, especially in an incredibly modern city like Barcelona, is that you will be walking down the street, one modern-looking building after the other, and then you will see it. A skull smiling back at you, or a mosaic wall guiding you along. The best part is, these buildings (mostly) aren’t set aside as museum pieces, to be looked at, and not touched. They are a living,breathing part of the city, with people occupying the buildings and being able to walk in and around and touch. Can you imagine this being your apartment?
What I find most interesting about his work is the way that he conceived and modeled these incredible buildings (most notably the Sagrada Familia). He literally hung strings upside down from big matrices and weighted them with lead weights to form the characteristic curves and arches. This insured symmetry and balance – but can you imagine the amount of work that would go into that? The delicate touch? Some of these models still survive today and are absolutely mind-blowing to look at.
