Sagrada Familia Doubt

A recent video illustrating "the final stages of Gaudí's masterpiece"  represents, we are led to believe, La Sagrada Familia completed. However, the temple is shown incomplete in this video. Where is the plaza across from the Glory façade and the main entrance steps that, according to Gaudí's design, span over carrer de Mallorca? The plaza and entrance steps require, moreover, the expropriation and demolition of several buildings that are still present in the video.

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Gaudí's hanging chain models: parametric design avant la lettre?

Funicular chain model of Colonia Güell church project by Antoni Gaudí,

as exhibited at Colonia Güell Interpretive Centre.

Only the crypt was realized.

Interior view of Colonia Güell Crypt

It is known that Gaudí hated drawing and preferred to use models as design tools; especially ones made of chains hung from a ceiling, or strings with small weights attached. Through experimentation with such models, he discovered a way to use traditional Catalan masonry techniques in new, more complex ways. A chain suspended simply from both its ends results in a catenary curve that naturally distributes the static load--in this case tension--evenly between the links of the chain. When this shape is flipped vertically and the materials become brick or stone, then the static load--now compressive--is similarly evenly distributed, resulting in an optimally efficient arch. This was already known for centuries. What Gaudí did was to apply this tension-compression analogy to chains hanging from chains (or arches superimposed on arches) asymmetrically, permitting him to design a much more fluid architecture. 

Gaudí made the models of his buildings upside-down, then, using mirrors on the floor to visualize his designs rightside-up. He also took photographs of these "wire-frame" models of sorts and "filled" them in with color to generate "solid model renderings", so to speak. All this has been well-documented in publications and exhibitions.

What is interesting is how, in the process, Gaudí effectively invented a kind of "parametric" design process long before the invention of the computer (let alone the development of software such as Maya or the Grasshopper plug-in for Rhino). One feature of so-called parametric design software is that it updates a complete three-dimensional digital model of a building every time any parameters are altered, allowing alternatives to be studied and compared in the search for a design that performs optimally (although to many architects who use this software it seems that the most important parameter is aesthetic form). Gaudí's hanging chains do exactly that: if a chain end-point is moved so as to enlarge or reduce, say, the floor plan in one corner, then the shape of the entire hanging chain model shifts and settles into a newly optimized catenary geometry. Of course, parametric design software does a great deal more, but at their conceptual root both of these modeling tools--one physical and the other digital--are analogous. 

Makes you wonder what Gaudí might have accomplished if he had had a computer. Or conversely, how Gaudí accomplished as much as he did without one.

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Architourism

Tourists at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona

Tourism is the only 'industry' in Spain that is not downsizing in the current (well, actually it's been five years now) economic downturn. On the contrary, the number of visitors to Spain has been growing steadily. And it's not beach tourism that's growing, but urban-cultural tourism, which includes architecture. In Barcelona, the Gaudí industry is doing molt bé.  Even the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion seems to be receiving more visitors than before.



But while architecture as cultural tourism is doing better than ever, architecture as building is in the doldrums in Spain, a country with a high number of living (not to say 'working') architects who are internationally respected. Something is surely wrong when an entire generation of talent sits idle while the talent of previous generations is increasingly consumed like fast food. But then again, it's a perfect sign of the Zeitgeist, isn't it?

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Gaudí in Red Alert

“Gaudí en alerta roja” is the title of an online petition currently the source of much debate in Barcelona. Its proponents, a group of luminaries from the local architectural and cultural establishment, argue that Gaudí’s work should be left "alone" and that he should be allowed to “rest in peace.” In fact, it demands that post-humous additions to projects Gaudí never completed in his lifetime be "undone" so as to revert to the state in which "the author" left them.



There are many problems with this rather romantic manifesto. For one thing, building is not a “pure” or “fine” art, and as Robert Hughes writes in Barcelona, Gaudí fancied himself as more of a builder than an architect: "That he was the son of artisans mattered immensely to Gaudí. He thought of himself as a man of his hands, not a theoretician." (p. 470). The Sagrada Familia was, from day one, a collaborative endeavor between Gaudí and his crew of masons and artisans. He never produced a full set of drawings of the temple (he apparently hated drawing), and is known to have made many design decisions in situ with his co-workers, operating at a level of humility that is unfathomable in the context of today's prima donna architecture. Leaving Gaudí’s work incomplete in the name of a supposed purity of authorship is probably something he himself would never have wished.



Another argument made in the manifesto is that the construction of such an ambitious temple is anachronous with a modern secular nation, and that the exorbitant amount of money it is costing would be better spent on more urgent needs. As far as I know, the construction of the Sagrada Familia is being financed mostly, if not entirely, by the hordes of tourists lining up to buy tickets to visit the site. Just who is to deny tourists and religious fanatics their right to pay tribute to a temple? Aren’t freedom of religion and freedom of mobility the very hallmarks of a modern, secular society?



Of course, it is entirely correct to insist that the Sagrada Familia should not invade public space, that it should have a building permit like any other construction site, and that there is no rational reason for a projected tunnel to have to make a wide detour around its foundations. Yes, the Casa Batlló’s neighbor should never have had four stories added on top of it, and perhaps the Colonia Güell crypt could have been renovated more sensitively (though it doesn’t look that bad either). But to insist that Gaudí’s work be returned to some sort of pure state and be henceforth left untouched?! That smacks of religious fundamentalism to me.

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