ANTONIO GAUDÍ

June 25, 1852, Reus (near Barcelona) - June 10, 1926, Barcelona

P a r t O n e

19

th

CENTURY GOTHIC REVIVAL AND ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Western architectural history might be represented as a continuous competition between the
Classical and Gothic paradigms: After Classical Greek and Roman architecture,
Romanesque period represented a transition to Gothic. Thereafter Gothic was a complete
opposition to the Classical. Renaissance on the other hand opposed and suppressed the
Gothic paradigm altogether. After neo-classicism in Romanticism, however, the Gothic
paradigm got the upper hand again. After the Gothic revival in many countries there was a
pluralism of styles called Historicism in which often the Classical dominated again. L’art
nouveau often represented the return of the spirit of Gothic revival, while proto-modern
classicism was its total abandonment. In certain ways the following modernism and
postmodernism also may be read as a competition of the two aforementioned paradigms.

The Classical paradigm was based on strictly codified order, proportions and symmetry. The
Gothic paradigm was more organic and picturesque, often disregarding symmetry. The
classical paradigm brought ready-made concepts to a certain location, while the Gothic
followed organically the topography and existing buildings. It is important to stress that these
methods are not only formal issues, but reflections of philosophy too: rational versus
emotional, mystical. The classical paradigm presupposes that the universe underlies a basic
order (usually conceived and represented as geometry), which man can chart. The Gothic
paradigm is more agnostic in this respect: man can learn only what God reveals for him;
consequently the only source is belief. The universe is not a geometrically co-ordinated
organism but a scene of miracles. The building, the cathedral still remains a mirror of the
universe, but not a strictly and geometrically co-ordinated one. It is more a vision. (See my
lecture in the theoretical course Architectural Theory of the Middle Ages, part on Neo-
Platonism and Early Christian Philosophy versus architecture.)

This idea is reinforced by some ideas of a recently published book: Charles Jencks’s Ecstatic
Architecture. The famous architectural historian speaks about Gaudí as an offspring of
ecstatic architectural heritage, i.e. the one that stems from rapture, frenzy — in Gaudí’s case
the religious one and not the sexual. Jencks sees in Gaudí’s expressionism the main features
of ecstatic architecture: “getting out of the body of the house” with the undulating lines, the
involvement of non-architectural motives into the buildings (see description of Casa Battló).
Curiously, Jencks relates his concept of ecstatic architecture mainly to Baroque and Art
Nouveau and not that much to Gothic, to which Gaudí belongs the most.

According to my reading, Antonio Gaudí belonged to the Gothic line both in the formal and
in the spiritual sense.

Historically the roots of Neo-Gothic style go back to the literature and literary criticism of 18th
century England. Critics after studying William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Edmund
Spencer (1552-1599) realised that these writers are more vivid and pleasant in the details than
the cold and noble-minded clasicising works following the Aristotelian aesthetics.

The idea was at hand: if dethronement of the classical aesthetics is possible in literature, why
not in architecture? Nevertheless, no architect dared to realise this idea at that time. Horace
Walpole (1717-1797), the writer of the first “Gothic” romance of chivalry, decided to spend
his life in the environment of his heroes. He founded a committee for collecting the motifs
and details of medieval architecture and let them implement in his Strawbery Hill, the first
Romantic Castle. This edifice caused a wave of castle, monastery and ruin imitations in
England, without a proper understanding of Gothic architecture. Neo-Gothic became soon a
caprice of gentry, like the breading of extravagant dogs, for instance. It gained on significance
when the Anglican Church appeared among the clients for neo-Gothic, lead by the idea that
this style properly expresses Christian values referring to the “Christian period.”

As the neo-Gothic referred to the Middle Ages, numerous countries took it as an epitome of
the glorious period of their national history. Curiously the neo-Gothic became a kind of
national style for almost all nations of Europe, including the small ethnic groups like the
Catalans, fighting for political independence. In England, for the Houses of the Parliament the
Gothic style was prescribed already in the competition.

A profound ideologically coloured architectural movement followed the former blind
imitation of Gothic details seen in the Strawberry Hill.

Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-1852) was the first who attacked the cheep pseudo-Gothic
architecture, pleading for a proper understanding of the medieval spirit. He maintained that if
a building is sincere, reflecting the real nature of materials and function, it must be beautiful.
Pugin’s ideas re-emerged in John Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture.

Ruskin pointed out that mood and moral feelings are the magic forces that create ‘good
architecture’. Furthermore, he stated that architecture possesses moral values independently
from the esthetical ones. According to him, the moral values are more important than
aesthetics.

Now, the question is what is this “moral base” of architecture? Is that simply sincerity,
displaying the nature and quality of materials and structures? Is it more? Can technology
overcome itself and become a moral issue?

I think hardly. What is tachles remains tachles, there is no way-out. My view is based on the
notion of the Absolute that is really absolute, without the slightest possibility of material
manifestation. I do not believe that modus essendi and modus operandi might be linked
properly in 19

th

century architecture and later.

But Ruskin and the Gothic revivalists were not so uncompromising in terms of strict Jewish
type monotheism. Due to their Christian origin they were more open to the ideas of
‘manifestation’. Manifestation means that the Absolute shows up directly in some natural

phenomena. (In the Japanese culture it is the notion of kami.) The possibility of manifestation
is crucial for architecture, because it connects architecture to the sacred.

The theoreticians of Gothic revival wanted to clean architecture from cheap imitation (read:
Classicism) and offer something more dignified. This is the place where Ruskin made a shift.
In his “Lamp of Beauty” he fills up the vacuum resulted by the purge of the imitations and the
unnecessary with putting nature as the source of inspiration for the architectural form. The
ornament should reflect natural forms, colours as a building is a bit like living being, a shell, a
flower. (As we shall see later the façade of Gaudi’s Casa Battló or the Sagrada Familia is
reflecting these principles.) Actually nature becomes the Absolute, an absolute that is essence
and manifestation in the same time. This is a significant departure from monotheism and a bit
the adoption of pantheism and paganism in general.

This type of pantheism was quite widespread by the end of the 19

th

century among artists and

musicians. It is known that Claude Debussy was large influenced by it. Numerous revivalists
of national tradition in Europe – Karoly Kosch, Eliel Saarinen and many others resorted to
pre-Christian forms. AS we will see later, the Viennese art nouveau, the Sezession will paint
on the façade the Latin slogan Ver Sacrum; Stravinski’s early masterpiece, the ballet Le Sacre
du Printemp, will also mirror this view.

After all Ruskin did not make architecture self-referential either, just changed the referent: it is
not the Classical any more, but natural form. (As we remember the Classical was initially also
referring to the natural: the Egyptian capital to the palm tree, Greek Doric capital to the mail
body, etc.) If you like, architecture is not telling the ‘truth’ either, just telling different stories.

These new stories are, however, very important, because they represent a metaphysics alien to
the Enlightenment thought and represent the revival of pre-Renaissance times. Furthermore,
this Medieval revival stresses the non-Christian or Jewish-Christian component of Medieval
culture. Namely, Medieval culture has had its ‘strictly Christian’ constituent — the idea of
transcendence, for instance — and its ‘pagan’ constituent, condemned as barbaric by the
Renaissance critics. In Gothic architecture the space conception, the airy structures of the
cathedrals expressed the transcendental, the strictly Christian ideas; while the narrative
constituent, the decoration, referring to nature expressed the other component.)

Eugène-Emanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-70) reconstructing numerous Gothic churches put the
emphasis in his researches more on the constructive virtues of Gothic architecture. He
stressed the importance of the establishment of a new style. His sketches influenced Gaudí
and a whole range of his contemporaries: Victor Horta (1861-1947), Henry van de Velde
(1863-1957), Hendrik Petrus Berlage (1856-1934), and many others.


GAUDI’S SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Antonio Gaudí y Cornet Gaudí was born in 1852, the year when John Ruskin published his
Stones of Venice and when Augustus Welby Pugin died in the lunatic asylum. Gaudí’s
birthplace is a small town called Reus (Tarragona district of Catalonia) some 100 kilometres
from Barcelona. He spent, however, most of his childhood in a village called Riudoms where
his father was born. His mother died soon after his birth, his older brother, a physician died

also young and his sister died soon after giving birth, leaving her child to raise for the
grandfather and later to Antonio Gaudí.

Gaudí started his studies of architecture in 1872 at the Escuela Superior d’Arquitectura in
Barcelona, staying until the end of his life in this flourishing city. When Gaudí arrived to
Barcelona, the city was in the heyday of its industrial and urban development: the metro was
being built, world exhibitions held and Wagner operas performed.

In order to understand 19th century culture and politics in Catalonia we have to recall a bit its
history. Catalonia was in the Middle Ages part of the Aragonian kingdom and with the
marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 it was united with Castilia. After a series of wars
Catalonia lost its privileges, national rights, becoming a Spanish province. Later, as a
consequence, Barcelona played a significant role in revolutionary movements against Spain,
and in the widespread of French republican ideals coming from the neighbouring France. In
the 19th century this influence fuelled nationalism and the wish for independence.

The Catalan nationalist movement started at first in literature, around 1850. The writers
searched for medieval themes referring to the period of national independence of Catalonia. In
the 1860s they succeeded to get accepted the Catalan language for official use, they founded
Catalan newspapers and theatre. Following literature, architecture played also a significant
role reviving the Gothic and the mudejar, the architecture of Iberian Muslims. The Catalan
Neo-Gothic style reflects religious and national feelings. (The Catholic Church played an
important role in fostering nationalist ideals. Although the Catholic church is by definition a
supra-national institution uniting mankind in God, in practice during the 19

th

century and in

some regions even later it fuelled nationalist movements mainly in order to regain its
influence, simply to be in the mainstream of the events. The biggest failure of this type was
the Vatican’s agreement with Adolf Hitler, which greatly legitimised the dictator in the eyes of
many Europeans.)

Parallel to the aforementioned moves, leftist ideologies also started to take hold in Catalonia,
and Gaudí learned soon about Owens and Fourier. In Catalonia socialism was blended with
Christianity, similarly to some Central European countries.



GAUDÍ’S DESIGN PRACTICES AND THEIR IDEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Gaudí’s biographers point out, that Gaudí spent a considerable time during his childhood in
his father’s coppersmith workshop watching the work with brass. According to them this
contributed largely to Gaudí’s close relation to material and his three-dimensional thinking. I
would go deeper and relate his penchant for material and manual work to his worldview.

According to my hypothesis he wanted to restore the unity of intellectual and manual
creation, bringing back the creation to a pre-Kantian level. Kant introduced the concept of a
priori ideas that were prior to sensual experience coming out directly from human minds.
(This priority of ideas and ideals over material goes back actually to the Jewish Bible. No
wonder, assimilated Jewish thinkers were so eager to join the neo-Kantian school of
philosophy in the 19

th

/20

th

century.) Modern architecture usually follows this pattern. Le

Corbusier, for instance, spoke about the concept of ‘inhabitation’ which meant for him
making an abstract concept in his head and then implementing it later to a concrete situation,
physical-geographical location. (Please find more about these ideas in my lecture in the
theoretical course Some Philosophical Foundations of Architectural Modernism, paragraphs:
Kant’s synthesis of subject and object.)

Gaudí felt in the building material the element of sacred (this is the often-quoted Gaudí’s
pantheism) and consequently took inspiration from the material. With that the
communication between idea and material became two ways, like during the Middle Ages,
when the master-builder directly experienced stone, working together with the apprentices.
This is in sharp contrast to the modern time architect in the clean office, remote to actual
material creation. (In this respect the CAD is almost an absolute restoring of the priority of
ideas. Curiously when used as a strategic tool it ruins architecture. The best architects
introduce the CAD only in later stages of design when all major decision were already made
and the computer serves solely as a ‘tactic weapon’.)

Gaudí was more a medieval master-builder then a modern architect. (His enemy, the architect
Eugenio d’Ors wrote in the La Veu de Catalunya that Gaudí worked without plans on the
base of his visions he got during the nights. Had it been true he would have followed the
Kantian path.) Gaudí really spent most of his time either on the building site leading the
workers — and often sharing with them some problem solving —, or in his small workshop
working with his model makers and draftsmen.

It has been recorded that during the construction of Park Güell Gaudí appeared every day
precisely at three o’clock on the site and discussed the actual problems with his workers. Thus
the architect, the 14 men strong bricklayer group and other craftsmen shared the process and
the joy of creation. It is known that the form of the famous bench there was determined also
by the workers.

This method of work freed Gaudí to represent (and also to think) in two-dimensional terms
(elevations, sections, floor plans) and enabled him to include solutions that were not possible
to represent by conventional 2D techniques. Deploying models and improvisations on the
spot enabled him to use the specific vaults, tilted columns. This improvisation technique
started already with the Casa Vicens.

If Gaudí did not like a detail he ordered to it demolish and build again. This does not mean
that he did not prepare sketches at all, just that his priorities were different. It is known that
the Casa Milà was constructed practically without detailed plans. This method of work made
Gaudí famous in Spain.


Cultural Background

Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), the architectural theorist and Gothic revivalist, John Ruskin, the
architectural essayist and the great German composer, Richard Wagner determined Gaudí’s
adopted cultural background. There is even a special link between Wagner’s Germanic
mythology and Barcelona: the Montsalvat monastery keeping the holy Grail mentioned in

Wagner’s operas Lohengrin and Parsifal was identified with the Montserrat (the small
mountain in Barcelona) and its monastery housing the patron saint of Catalonia.

Gaudí was very much taken by Wagner’s music dramas, a peculiar world of its own: a genial
blend of German nationalism, paganism and a special Christianity coupled with implicit anti-
Semitism. Wagner’s attraction to pre-Christian times, the German mythology, highlighted in
the Tetralogy of the Ring des Niebelungen, found its echo in the Catalan nationalism that
flared up in the 1860s when Madrid asserted its sovereignty over Catalonia and prohibited the
use of Catalan language. It was also in the framework of a general ‘pagan revival’ in Europe in
which ancient myths (Cid, Calevala) found their way to a broad public, sometimes even
fabricated ones (Ossian).

In Gaudí’s case this ‘pagan revival’ (critics usually mention pantheism in connection with
Gaudi’s opus) goes hand in hand with his Catholicism. (In Gaudí’s time the Catholic Church
favoured the Catalan secessionist movement that facilitated Gaudí’s life. Later, however it
acquired more controversial allies like General Franco.)

There is even an ideological parallel between Richard Wagner’s music and Gaudí’s
architecture. Both were grounded in nationalism and rooted in local soil (mother earth), both
adapted some elements of paganism and a ‘spiritually reduced Christianity’, but both took
avant-garde steps in art. Wagner ‘deconstructed’ the diatonic music with his chromatic
principle of harmony (this was the first step towards a complete deconstruction of Western
musical keys accomplished later by Arnold Schönberg, the baptised Viennese Jew.) Similarly,
Gaudí took the first steps towards completely three-dimensional buildings, starting the
dethronement of horizontals and verticals in architecture, accomplished later by an American
Jew, Peter Eisenman. Politically both Wagner and Gaudí shared very conservative views.
Both of them favoured medieval culture, sympathising with Christian socialism as an anti-
thesis of liberalism, free entrepreneurship. Probably the only major difference was between
Gaudi and Wagner the fact that the latter openly criticised the Jews, speaking about the
danger Jews posed to Western culture, though he wrote at the beginning on music. And I
must admit, his attacks on Giacomo Meierbeer contain some elements of thruth.

Gaudí’s patron, the textile manufacturer Eusebio Güell Bacigalupi belonged to the group of
industrials who were socialists in the same time, actually a Christian socialist, like Karl
Evangelist Zacherl, Jože Plecnik’s patron and friend. Güell favoured the idea of the garden
city commissioning from Gaudi and Berenguer to design a workers’ community, known
today as Colonia Güell. The Wagnerian, Güell himself, ran a salon for the local intelligentsia
in his house, the Palau Güell, built around a music room, an organ loft and chapel. In the
same time this composite space echoed the form of the typical Islamic court so prevalent in
Spain.


WORKS

Gaudí started his career in the spirit of Neo-Gothic. His style matured in the 1890s, as Henry
Russel-Hitchcock pointed out. Although the architectural language of his early work (Vincens
house 1978-80) after his graduation from the local Escuola Superior de Arquitectura looks

rather original and extravagant for the non-Spanish eyes, according to Frampton, however, it
just recalls the Iberian past, the semi-Islamic Mudéjar.


Casa Vicens, 1883-85

Palau Güell, 1886-89

Santa Teresa de Jesús College, 1889-94

Casa Calvet, 1998-1904



The Sagrada Familia, 1883-1926

The turn in Gaudí’s opus occurred in 1884 when he was appointed for the construction of the
Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia), becoming a particular gothic
revivalist.

The builders wanted the church to become the ‘cathedral of the poor’ erected in a workers
quarter. They wanted to return the believers to Christ in the uncertain times of the 19th
century.

At the beginning Gaudí followed Villar’s plans (1881) based on 13-14

th

century design,

completing the crypt by 1891. However, in the design of the transept’s façade and the towers
Gaudí opened new chapters of architectural history.

The portals, the steep gables follow Gothic ordonnance, but abundance of sculpture and their
particular nature represent a real novelty.

Initially Gaudí wanted to erect a rather conventional Neo-Gothic church, but due to a very
significant donation in 1895 he decided to construct a monumental cathedral with a well-
elaborated iconography. The largest central tower represents the saviour, around which four
smaller towers represent the evangelists. The tower toped by a dome above the apses
represent Virgin Mary. On the three main façades triple gates are composed: one represents
Christ’s birth, one refers to Christ’s passionate death, and one recalls resurrection. This latter,
the gate of glory is the largest and the most elaborated. Each triple gate is marked by four-four
towers and they together symbolise the 12 apostles.

The sculptures and accompanying architectural elements are curiously twofold:

a) either highly naturalistic with much less abstraction than it was usual for Gothic or

Neo-Gothic, or

b) meltingly abstract foreshadowing 20

th

century movements like Czech Cubism of

German Expressionism.

In terms of iconography the sculptures follow the usual patterns. The aforementioned split, or

— to use a postmodernist term — the juxtaposition of different codes is, however, completely
new and might be read as an unconscious anticipation of some ideas of postmodernism.

I think the high naturalism, particularly the representation of vegetation on the façade, goes
back to a certain extant to the Spanish tradition in which even sculptures were conspicuously
coloured (blood leaking from Christ’s body, for instance).

The high abstraction of some other sculptures and gothic formal language in general, on the
other hand, foreshadows the 20

th

century metal tube structures. Namely, instead of the semi-

sculptural and semi-structural gothic forms Gaudí uses bluntly technical forms that strictly
follow the interplay of forces discovered in his sophisticated models. This structure abandons
not only the gothic spirit, but also art nouveau establishing a fully three-dimensional
expression that will emerge in modernism proper. There is, however, a significant difference
between Gaudí’s and the modernist structure: in the former the structure is a manifestation,
an expression of the divine, in the vast majority of modernist works the structure is merely, or
almost merely functional, utilitarian. (However, it would be interesting to analyse in this
context Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s saying “God dwells in the details”.)

In 1926 Gaudí died, but the construction of the church lasts still today. When the whole
structure gets its final form, the disproportion between the existing nave and the towers will
disappear due to the higher part, yet to be constructed.

P a r t T w o

From the last time I owe you bibliography.

1. Frampton: Modern architecture – A critical history
2. Jencks: Modern Movements in Architecture
3. Russel-Hitchcock: 19

th

and 20

th

century architecture

Before I start analysing further Gaudi buildings I would have to address and important issue
of architecture – actually its two main principles:

a) truth to material and structure
b) cladding

Each of them being rooted in different philosophical traditions – Eidos (the continuity
between ideas and form) and the deconstructed link between idea and form.

Gaudi was worshipping even in this respect two Gods: the same building may have the
principles side by side, as we will see soon.


Casa Batlló, 1905-07

This block of flats is a remodelling of an earlier structure, which, however does not show up
on the façade, except perhaps a relative large flat surface, unusual for Gaudí. But this flat

surface got its counterweight in the lower floors’ dynamic plasticism and the regularly placed
balconies, as well as the organically shaped roof.

The lower storeys extraordinary plasticity results from the bony articulation of curvilinear
stone members. The upper floors got a fantastic plaque of broken coloured glass, subtler in
tonality than Gaudí’s usual mosaic of faience fragments. The façade resembles a bit Victor
Horta’s style, though with nearly rectilinear widows compensated with bulging balconettes
giving a slightly Neo-Rococo impression.

Both the aforementioned balconettes and the bony curvilinear elements of the first floor had a
metaphoric role: the former referred to the death masks of the Catalan secessionists, murdered
by the Madrid power structure, the latter to the bones of these heroes. No wonder, that
Francoists, understanding this burned his drawings and smashed his models. (Charles Jencks:
Ecstatic architecture, p 49.)

The most striking element of the house is the roof (the ‘dinosaur fragment’), which together
with the small pastry-inspired turret, secure the pilgrimage of tourists to the building. The
cockscomb form is alien to Gaudí’s ‘constructed’ organic architecture that justifies its non-
tectonic form by some static rules. In this case the form is completely free, whimsical. Further
on, its cover, the scale-like tiles refer to fishes or other maritime animals or even more on
ancient reptiles. (It is a curious anticipation of Frank O. Gehry’s fish-shapes). This is a
deconstruction of the clear borderline between nature and man-made environment,
foreshadowing the later blooming organic architecture. Although the ‘dinosaur’ is limited to
the roof — actually it lies on the rectangular body of the building — it opens the ways for
metaphoric or even naturalistic representation of natural formations in 20

th

century

architecture. I guess the organic shape here refers more to the fairy tales than to ancient living
beings (paganism), as it will be the case with some mid- or late-20-century architects.


Casa Milà, 1906-10

Built for Roser Segimon de Milà, known in Barcelona as La Pedrera (quarry). The nickname,
the quarry signifies the most important aspect of the building: its stone façade. The Casa Milà
has had a very specific iconography: A synthesis of nature, architecture and the divine, a
mountain that was eroded by wind and storm containing quarries. On the snowy peaks of this
mountain the Holy Virgin appears in the form of a gigantic sculpture on the roof of the
building that was later replaced by a stone rosette that does not interrupt the wavy rhythm of
the roof.

In some respects La Pedrera represents a continuation of the Casa Batlló, in some others it is
the anti-thesis of it. The small organic balconettes of the Casa Batlló that were opposing the
flat façade, here got counterparts that take over the whole surface of the edifice. Actually there
is no duality between the balcony and the plain of the façade any more: the whole façade
turns to be a dramatic, ‘organic sea-surface,’ with waves frozen into white stone.

The polychrome drama of the Casa Batlló is replaced by a plastic one. The stone façade
allows another reading too: the cut stone surface contradicts to the logic of stone-cutting
(rectangular form, linear edges and joints) and suggest the erosion of stone due to the sea

waves. The iron grilles refer to the surf of sea-waves reaching the shore. They are, however,
black. The common feature of all façade elements is the absence of linear and rectangular
elements. Both the stone formation and the iron grills may be taken as anticipations of mid-
20-century sculpture notably those ones of Henry Moore.

Curiously, the house has a steel bearing structure, cladded with the massive stone facing. (A
similar contradiction is in Loos’ Goldman & Salatsch house, 1905, where steel structure is
cladded by a layer of stone. The difference is, however, significant: Loos shows implicitly that
the classical envelope is just a cladding by displacing the axis between the windows of the
upper floor and the inter-columnar axis of the ground floor.)

In terms of bearing structure, the most interesting part of the building is the last story. It has a
very particular brick structure with parabolic arches and vaulting. However, unlike modernist
structures that look completely rational, this one has a very peculiar duality: the vertical
section shows the most rational shape with a minimum of building material, but the floor-plan
is irregular, almost completely organic. It is a real 3D space foreshadowing the later computer
age and its presentations of space. Actually, Gaudi’s models with the small weights are
precursors of computer renderings that united both the static (calculation) and representation.

The smallest flats in the house are 120 m

2

large, the cost of flats was 135 peseta/m

2

not more

than the average in Barcelona at that time.

It is important to stress that the Casa Milà is not only ‘façade architecture’ in spite of the
duality of steel structure and the undulating structure. The whole house is a breakaway from
rectangular orders altogether. Located on the corner of a typical Barcelona block with cut
corners, it is organised around two irregular internal courtyards having a largely irregular floor
plan. It is though irregular in another manner than the façade: there are strait lines between
dots, the vertical elements of the skeleton structure.

The ‘flat roof’ (actually it is not flat) is a special spatial experience of its own. It ‘deconstructs’
the idea of flat roof and pitched roof altogether. It is a unique wavy surface, like a hilly
countryside — or like an ancient reptile — where one encounters different ‘huts’ and
‘creatures’ from fairy tales. This surface circumvents the inner courtyards meeting them in a
funnel on their end. The funnel made of a tilted yellow wall with very small irregularly placed
windows. This surface also recalls animal forms: the visitor is on the back of a huge reptile.
On the roof there are six sculptural forms that resemble primeval huts but also some ancient
living beings. These are really organic metaphoric shapes. They are joined by a great number
of chimneys ending up in ‘faces’. These faces recall armoured medieval warriors.

In a historic perspective the Casa Milà represent a milestone, anticipating numerous principles
voiced much later by Le Corbusier. Its skeletal structure and moveable walls between the flats
anticipate the plan libre (Gaudí himself stressed the possibility of changing the function of the
building to a hotel.) The free façade and the independent roof level, the non-figurative
sculpture all anticipate Le Corbusier’s principles of modern architecture.


Park Güell, 1900-14

In this work Gaudí could create free forms uninhibited of any functional or constructive
constrains. He created the pair of gatehouses, the grand stairway leading to the covered
market above Gaudí’s own house. The irregularly shaped roof of the market – a space that
recalls the interior of Egyptian temples – is supported by sixty-nine grotesque Doric columns.
They end up in special capitals. The most striking feature is the tilted line of the last row of
columns, a very particular grotesque trick resembling late 20

th

century Deconstruction that

negates the vertical.

The exotic, mosaic-faced edge of the terrace terminates in an esplanade, which contrasts the
random rubble construction of the rest of the park (also out of vertical).

The Park Güell has had its special iconography: The allegory of passage to Paradise. In the
form of childlike amusements, lessons of the faith are encoded here. (Gaudí belonged to the
central organization that propagated the Catholic faith in Catalonia through artistic means, that
included even photography.) In an almost Gothic manner in a particular Gesamtkunstwerk
these lessons were comprising the advanced use of crafts, popular culture, and even fairy
tales. (Gaudí was in the same years completing the giant educational tableau of the Nativity
Facade at the Sagrada Familia.)

The entrance to the park is in a way an allegorical invitation for the wise and witty to discover
here intimations of a higher theme: the entrance into paradise, archetype of the idealised
enclave-garden. The allegory starts with the brightly coloured park walls and gate houses.
They denote a passage and the difference between one world and the another one. In this
context, the large dragon-lizard and serpent of the stairs are especially evocative. These exotic
creatures correspond to many features of the medieval paradise motif that evolved from the
biblical image of the walled city of the New Jerusalem, set with precious and brightly colored
stones. It was an image first set forth in the Book of Revelations, and widely developed in
medieval romance as well as more popular travel literature. Most significantly for Gaudí and
other theologically attuned conservatives, it was also developed in the speculations and
imagery of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Dante Alighieri.

Access to paradise had always to be difficult. In the Middle Ages this inaccessibility was
represented physically with high walls, spatially as remoteness, and iconographically with the
presence of exotic and forbidding beasts. In medieval literature symbolic guardians might
provide the paradise-seeker with tests of spiritual constancy. Historically, these guardian
monsters were depicted as dragons and serpents. Appearing individually or in pairs, they
survived sometimes as iconographic extensions of the serpent of Eden, sometimes as symbols
associated with Saints Michael and George.

In the Park Güell entrance passage, the dragon-lizard and the serpent seem less than
forbidding creatures, reflecting a festive analogue of the tradition, and perhaps associated with
the courtly love parodies of the paradise garden.

The features of the entrance passage also coordinate references to a journey experience. Like
the threshold symbols of the twin towers of theological and cardinal virtues found in medieval
literature, the prominent gate towers mark a place of transition. The participant in the park
experience thus must pass through the gate, face the dragon and serpent, and unriddle the
play of appearances here in order to gain the promised bliss within. Through the deeply

walled, castle-like passage ascending to the market area, Gaudí also emphasized the
narrowness of the path into the park and forced the viewer to stop and contemplate the
intensity of the entrance sculpture along with the rest of the entrance program.

In Gaudí's original plans, the playfulness of the entrance program was to have been
underlined by a curious device which probably also relates to the paradise motif: Gaudí had
intended to place a pair of mechanically animated gazelles at the entrance gate! As the gates
on which the gazelles were to have been mounted opened to the park, the animals were to
have folded into a recess. The disappearing gazelles would have extended the game of illusory
appearances, reinforcing the motif of worldly pleasures that recede or transform as the visitor
proceeds further into the park. In Islamic tradition — relevant for Gaudí since his student days
— the gazelle could be found with the Tree of Life in paradise representations, as in Persian
carpets and pottery.


Church of the Colonia Güell, 1908-14

This is the final word of a great architect. The floor plan of the church is Gothic in its
organisation, but organic in its geometry. The floor plan might be taken as the inside of a fruit
just bisected. The same organic principle extends to the elevations. The columns look like
trunks of trees, the windows like wholes on a tree. The special surface of the building — a
particular technique of brick masonry — reinforces this organic impression.

INTERPRETATION AND EVALUATION

Antonio Gaudí is one of the most multi-faceted architects of all times. Each period, each
movement or even single architect reads him in different ways.

GAUDÍ’S PERIOD RECEPTION

Gaudí presented the projects of his Sagrada Familia at the Paris Expo 1910, but it did not
raise much attention. The reason might be that Gaudí put the emphasis on his iconography
that was far from the technical interest of the age. After World War Two, in 1919 Ernst
Neufert travelled to Barcelona and even Gaudí received him, what was quite unusual. He
compared Gaudí’s small workshop with the Medieval Bauhütte often mentioned by Walter
Gropius. Gropius’ idea was to implement the tradition of the Bauhütte (medieval guild,
literary: building hut) to the Bauhaus, i.e. to build up an organic community of creators.


THE SURREALISTS’ ENTHUSIASM FOR GAUDÍ

By the end of Bauhaus period a less pious interpretation of Gaudí followed. He was finally
‘discovered’ and published by the Surrealists. Curiously enough, the religious, medieval
tempered artist was praised by Salvador Dali in the journal called Minotaure, in 1933.

Dali labelled Gaudí as the creator of “calve-liver shaped doors of tremendous taste and
beauty”. Later, Dali created a photomontage called “in memoriam Antonio Gaudí y Cornet”
where naked female bodies represented the towers of the Sagrada Familia. I think, apart from
the blasphemy – actually I don’t see this as a blasphemy – this in an interesting reading.
Bearing in mind Gaudi’s celibate and the expressionist nature of his architecture, such a
sexual interpretation makes sense. One could go further, and replace the female bodies with a
more explicit sexual symbol.


GAUDÍ AND MODERNISM

Gaudí offered novelties for the modernists too. His attraction to the bearing structure, his
representation of forces – both the models and the constructed buildings – captured the
interest of some modernists. However, a proper reception was hampered for a long time by
the exuberance of decoration and formal richness.

Actually, there has been a constant misconception in the interpretation of architectural
modernism: some critics read modernism as a unanimously rational, technical movement with
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s cool glass villas, sky-scrapers, Le Corbusier’s well lit white
cubes, prisms or rough concrete surfaces. Modernism, however, comprised also the irrational.
Just the insistence on the rational and the only rational mirrors the irrational: if you
overemphasise one aspect of architecture you lose the others that is irrational ones. Moreover,
the aforementioned architects were not entirely rational in their philosophy either.
Architectural modernism went back to some pre-19

th

-century ideas and practices, as for

instance the Bauhaus, that wanted to heal the split between the architect and manual worker,
the intellectual paper-work and the actual stone-carving (the concept of the Bauhütte). In this
respect Antonio Gaudí represents an anticipation of some principles of 20

th

century

modernism.

The difference between Gaudí’s irrationalism and the modernists’ was only in the way they
showed up. Mies van der Rohe’s glass boxes looked extremely rational due to their
minimalism. Actually, in terms of construction cost, maintenance expenses they were
everything but rational. Le Corbusier’s buildings were apparently completely pragmatic. In
fact, as history has shown it, his details, even floor-plans are sometimes very far from the
rational. Gaudí’s irrationalism was, on the other hand, obvious; his metaphysics was in odds
with the spirit of time.


HISTORIC READINGS

Frampton interprets Gaudí’s work thus:

Departing from the principles of Viollet-le-Duc, Gaudí finally transformed his raw
material into an assembly of powerful images, whose emotive force recalls the
operatic genre of Wagner.

Seen in retrospect, the Casa Milà seems to anticipate something of the ethos of the
Expressionism that was soon to emerge in Central Europe. (p. 66.)

Similarly to his patron’s and friend’s sentiments, Gaudí in his art tried to synthesise the world
of Gothic (the Wagnerian north), the Mediterranean south and local particularities as well as
some vaguely describable socialism.

Ary Leblond wrote (Gaudí et l’architecture méditérranéenne, L’Art et les artistes, II, 1910,
after Frampton p. 65.):

Gaudí sought a Gothic which was full of sunlight, structurally related to the great
Catalan cathedrals, employing colour as both the Greeks and the Moors did, logical
for Spain; a Gothic, half maritime, half continental, enlivened by Pantheistic
richness.

POSTMODERNIST READING

Gaudí’s ideological and formal pluralism, complexities and contradictions create a certain
postmodernist atmosphere. The main dualities are:

1.

Gaudí can be interpreted as a constructivist, but in the same time as an expressionist.
These two principles sometimes go together on the same building (Casa Milá).

2.

He may be considered as a revolutionary creator and as a conservative architect at the
same.

3.

He was a pious catholic and a pantheist at the same.

4.

Gaudí might be viewed on the one hand as a completely self-contained, highly individual
artist personality of its own kind, and on the other, as an architect who is deeply rooted
in his local, Catalan culture.

5.

Gaudí wanted to revive local architectural heritage, but in the same time he was eager to
create a new expression. (Frampton pointed out that “save his unusual fantasy, Gaudí
was hardly unique. This antithesis, latent in the whole of Arts and Crafts movement, was
reflected in the Irish Celtic literary revival, which exercised such a strong influence on
the Glasgow School in the 1890s.”)

6.

Gaudí is timeless on the one hand, and on the other bound to his period, 19

th

century

Europe (Gothic revival) and the l’art nouveau.

7.

He was an adherent of the principle of ‘truth to material’ and to the principle of cladding
(Bekleidungstheorie) at the same time.

8.

Gaudí is one of the few top class architects whom both the connoisseur of architecture
and the nouveau rich appreciate. Gaudí is probably the first modernist architect, who
used the double coding, probably without knowing what is it and without having any
intention to address two different publics. The first code is the infantile one — the funny
shapes that evoke our childhood, the palaces from fairy tales. The second code addresses
the architect or art historian and it is rather complex.

9.

Gaudí’s architecture is highly rational being based on structural models, but in the same
time it is highly irrational. This latter code is an important part of architectural history.
Gaudí challenges the tectonic principle in Güell Park by introducing tilted Doric columns
— anticipation of Deconstruction.

GAUDÍ’S OWN READING

Let me finish this lecture with a Gaudí quotation:

“Creation ceaselessly acts through the artist. He nevertheless does not create, just
discover. People, who search after the rules of nature as aids, collaborate with the
Creator. People who copy are not collaborating. Thus, being original means a
return to origin.” (After Moravánszky, p. 30.)

Bibliography:

1.

Enric Casanelles: Nueva Vision de Gaudí, La Poligrafa, Barcelona, 1965.

2.

Ákos Moravánszky: Antoni Gaudí, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1980.

3.

Georege R. Collins: Antonio Gaudí, G. Braziler, New York, 1960.

4.

Pionniers du XX

e

Siécle — Gaudí, catalogue of the exhibition held in the Musée des

Arts Décoratifs, Paris, Imprimeire Tournon, Paris, 1971.

5.

Lara Vinca Masini: Gaudí, Hamlyn, London, 1969

6.

Lluís Permanyer, Melba Levick: Gaudí of Barcelona, Rizzoli, New York, 1997

7.

Antonio Gaudí, A+U, Special Edition, No. 86.

8.

Conrad Kent, Dennis Prindle: Hacia la arquitectura de un paraiso: Park Güell,
Hermann Blume Ediciones, Princeton Architectural Press, N.Y., 1993.