View Full Version : [Barcelona] Sagrada Familia - Antonio Gaudí
Just returned from Spain
The Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's Cathedral, is one of the most inspiriing and beautiful buildings I have ever seen. A true honour and privilage to see a cathedral under construction. Some photos to inspire others will follow.
And again - sculptural beauty
A few of the towers - magic!
cannot wait to see it myself :D inspiring pictures !
I'm waiting for you guys to post a detailled sketchup model of the Sagrada... :D
How about a KMZ or some general idea of how I would find this building? I know it is probably hard to miss when you are in Barcelona but I just want to make sure we are all keeping in with the format for this forum :)
Thanks for posting this building... I think it is one of those buildings you just really have to see in real life to completly appreciate and understand... It may sound crazy to many of you but I have always had a "stand-offish" opinion of this building... :o It kinda scares me...
i know what you mean Wizum - I was completely ambivalent about Gaudi's work before seeming it "in the flesh" - but this building is very very awe inspiring, from a number of perspectives. There is also great depth of meaning, in the use of materials and (what surprised me) the sculptural form of the building is drawn entirely from nature!
The intent is that it will be like a forest - the comulns (in various colours) rising and forming a canopy through which sunlight will filter...
i'll post location (etc) info shortly
imasayer
10-10-2006, 23:12
There are several things that amaze me about Goudi. First of all, all of this was done without the aid of computers! How do you draft all of this by hand? How to you communicate all of these intricate details to craftsman. That is the other amazing thing. The craft that goes into creating these undulating complex forms. While I have no desire to imitate these biomorphic forms, I stand in awe of them. Thanks for the pics.
yes, the skill was/is amazing - but there are two interesting notions. Firstly Gaudi made models - smalle and large scale, buildings and details, in plaster. So eveything was modelled first.
The other is that he also used models to establish loadings! A scale model with little weighted bags. He apparently used the technique frequently. He'd make a string model of (say) a tower - hanging it upside down. then attach small weights to get the curves. In the end there's be a whole mesh of string and weights, and if viewed in a mirror on the floor the tower could be seen in it's correct orientation - I'll try to post one of these amazing structural models.
Before seeing the Works, I didn't really think much of Gaudi, but after having done so, and considering when the works were undertaken, I was just blown away!
primocordara
11-10-2006, 04:47
Hey Scott, I posted the kmz long time ago, as part of the PPB kmz file...:cool:
Here it is again...
BTW: Someone posted a very simple skp in GE, but its useless...
The Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's Cathedral, is one of the most inspiriing and beautiful buildings I have ever seen. A true honour and privilage to see a cathedral under construction.
the Sagrada Família is not a cathedral but an expiatory temple, a "simple" church (but not a "simple" building, of course)... architecturally there isn't anything like it in the whole catalan nation, but administratively it's just another church..
there's only one cathedral per diocese (per bishop, archbishop in the case of the catalan capital) and BCN had already a cathedral since the 1298 (well, previous to the gothic one it had a paleochristian temple that function already as a cathedral)...
most people think of the SF as a Cathedral because it's huge (that does not make it a cathedral per se) or, weirdly, because most tourist guides are wrong... well, actually, most guides are usually wrong (too abstract at least) with most things dealing with Catalonia, its culture, history and social and lingustic realities..
Medit, you're quite correct of course and we should be more careful with our descriptions. Thank you for clarification
What do you think will happen when SF is completed? Will it "simply" be a church?
I was told that the crpty is consecrated, and that it is possible that next year the ground floor area will also become consecrated.
Most photos don't show the beautiful interior with soaring columns and carved ceiling - and the light!
Nick Fox
22-10-2006, 03:17
Lets not forget that most of the details are not based on Gaudi drawings for he didn't make that many of this building and when he was run down by a tram, most of the images were in his head. I forget the name of the architect (an Australian I believe) who is bringing this building ro fruition but you have to take your hat off to him for the fantastic job he is doing.
Medit, you're quite correct of course and we should be more careful with our descriptions. Thank you for clarification
What do you think will happen when SF is completed? Will it "simply" be a church?
I was told that the crpty is consecrated, and that it is possible that next year the ground floor area will also become consecrated.
Most photos don't show the beautiful interior with soaring columns and carved ceiling - and the light!
I'm not really sure what will happen when they finish it.. there's this kind of ..er.. aura around this building about being permanently in construction that I think they are not really worried about that now... probably because most of the people of the Catholic Church living today won't be around when they finish it (the finish date is estimated to be around 2022-24)..
I think some time ago (maybe a couple of years ago) the archbishop of Barcelona said something of givin' the SF somethin like a "special status".. it can't become a cathedral (because the gothic one was there first) but of course, it can't be just "another" church (starting with the fact that, when finished, it will have a capacity of 13,000 for mass... though it sounds kind of weird in the 21st century to have such a space when catholicism (or religion in general) is losing its popularity in a society that gets more agnostic -not even atheist- as time goes by... so I highly doubt they will fill that space if its not for special occasions)
the central nave is almost finished, previsions say that next year -2008 at least- it will be already prepared for mass... works now will move to the main portal (now that the two lateral portals are finished, the "new" Passion Facade and the Nativity Facade -finished by Gaudí himself-, the crypt and the central space are more or less completed...
parallel to the main facade works, the four 120 m tall pinnacles over the transept and the 140m tower over the crypt will follow.. and finally when this 5 towers will be done (the one over the crypt being pretty similar and a kind of construction test for the main central belltower) the last piece will follow -and most spectacular of the whole building-: the central 170 m tall Jesus tower, which will have a huge cross on top -physically, from an architectural point of view, completely unproportioned, and symbolically absolutely outdated and out of time, in my opinion-...
I'm guessing this cross on top will provoke lots of discussions among barcelonians.., remember that this was one of the most anti-religious cities in certain times of the 19th and 20th centuries, with monks and nuns killed and churches burned down in the Civil War, the Tragic Week, etc... fortunately we don't have more of that violence, but the anticlericalism is still alive and most barcelonians aren't religious -'cept for a certain type of middle class bourgeoisie, which has no natural substitute among the younger generations, that were educated and grew during the fascisct (and ultra-catholic) Franco dictatorship..-
we'll see what happens.. let's hope that really they will finish it around 2020.. and even if it doesn't become a cathedral, or if it loose its religious function it will always be a key tourist attraction, and the municipal economy will always take advantage of that! :P
this is how it looks now (or some 3 or 4 years ago) and how it will be once finished:
http://www.gloryday.com/images/antes-despues_NACIMIENTO.gif
http://www.gloryday.com/images/antes-despues_PASION.gif
Lets not forget that most of the details are not based on Gaudi drawings for he didn't make that many of this building and when he was run down by a tram, most of the images were in his head. I forget the name of the architect (an Australian I believe) who is bringing this building ro fruition but you have to take your hat off to him for the fantastic job he is doing.
most "important" details are based on Gaudí's instructions, which were trespassed to the next generations through some of his apprentices, and are present in the models that were burned during the Civil War (1936-39) but were immediately reconstructed in 1939 by some of the people that worked with Gaudí himself to do them (Lluís Bonet i Garí and Isidre Puig Boada basically)..
actually Gaudí wanted this to be finished by other people -precisely like those gothic cathedrals that were continued by different master builders with time-, he just wanted to set and make clear the main architectural concept and volumetry of the project but there were lots of details that not even he did thought about, so he let the next generations invent them...
the son of Lluís Bonet i Garí, Jordi Bonet i Armengol, is in charge of the project nowadays and has lots of collaborators (works on the temple has never stopped since 1882 actually, with its good and bad times)..
the australian you are referring to is Mark Burry (http://www.sial.rmit.edu.au/People/mburry.php) .. but he's just one of the people involved.. actually, the people who should take credit for keeping Gaudí's dream alive are Bonet i Garí and Puig i Boada (who started with Gaudí in the 1920s and worked in the temple until the 1970s, until they died actually), Domènec Sugrañes (another collaborator of Gaudí who also worked on the temple until he died in the 1930s) and Bonet i Armengol (the present architect) with the structural analysts Buxadé & Margarit and the UPC professor Josep Gómez (the guy doin' most of the digital work of reconstruction)... and then others, like Mr. Burry and lots of architects, craftsmen, engineers, etc..
here's a chronology of the temple (http://www.geocities.com/medit1976c/sagrada.htm) (it's in catalan.. you can use this site (http://traductor.gencat.cat/index_en.jsp) to get "one of those" kind of funny automatic translations in English..)
david p - great pics - you didn't explain that this was the mothod Gaudi used to determine loads on columns etc. suspending the string shape and hanging scaled weights to create arcs etc. then, if the model is viewed upside down, like in a mirror, the final shape of the structure will be shown, and the loads known.
Medit - great summary and background material, thanks for adding.
Cheers
well, apart from the fact that I find most of the recently finished and planned parts of the temple quite ugly, I have one more concern. I remember an animation from the exhibition in the basement of SF which showed the finished temple. One could fly over it there and back and see it from all sides. one thing struck me - the main facade is being built in the direction towards the sea where it has absolutly no space cos there's a normal housing block right across Mallorca street. And in the animation it was shown not only without that block, but even without 2 more cerdà's blocks - all the way to Diagonal and probably beyond - there was an enormous empty stripe pruned in the city in order that the main facade was percieved in all its monstrousity.
medit, you may know whether this is going to be realized or not. well I think they will have to in order to really finish the church. But they will have it more and more complicated to justify such an act in today's, as you say, agnostic society. this is not Rome in the 17th century...
well probably the new large square will be another great place for skateboarders! or when rolling stones ressurected will hold a concert in the church in 2025, they will have enough space for the audience...
one thing struck me - the main facade is being built in the direction towards the sea where it has absolutly no space cos there's a normal housing block right across Mallorca street. And in the animation it was shown not only without that block, but even without 2 more cerdà's blocks - all the way to Diagonal and probably beyond - there was an enormous empty stripe pruned in the city in order that the main facade was percieved in all its monstrousity.
medit, you may know whether this is going to be realized or not. well I think they will have to in order to really finish the church. But they will have it more and more complicated to justify such an act in today's, as you say, agnostic society. this is not Rome in the 17th century...
well probably the new large square will be another great place for skateboarders! or when rolling stones ressurected will hold a concert in the church in 2025, they will have enough space for the audience...
yes the block in front of the main facade, at Mallorca Street, has its days counted (in fact, I remember one time I read somewhere the rent prices at that block and were ridiculously low compared with prices at the surrounding blocks)...
everyone knows that the City Council will expropriate it in 15/20 years and tear it down to do the third square around the temple (now each lateral portal has already its square/park in front)
I (and most people I think), both as an architect and a citizen, find it to be a correct decision, you just can't have such a monumental thing without an open space in front -either for contemplation of the monument and for not having a residential block with this kind of built 'wall' in front-
map: http://www.bcn.es/cgi-guia/guiamap4/cgi-guia/?actives=&scl=5&cnt=31286.31%2C83916.38&plt=&plant=capes4c&txt1=&txt2=&idioma=0&grayscl=0&zoom=3&map.x=268&map.y=151
and as you say, Gaudí wanted people goin' up and down the Diagonal Avenue to see the SF with an enormous esplanade in front (now filled with two blocks and a triangular square).. but expropiate two entire blocks would be too much -both economically for the Council and from an urban planning point of view- and as dense as the Eixample grid is, having two empty blocks for the mere contemplation of a monument would be a too expensive luxury for the city herself...but yeah, just the block in front I find it a clever and well-pondered decision
ps. if the Stones are around in 2025 I will start to believe that thing of the deal with the devil ... :D not exactly the SF being then the right place to play Sympathy For The Devil! :P .. if Gaudí is watching from wherever and see Jagger singin' about devils, street fighting men and honky tonk women next to his exaggeratedly devotional and symbolically ultra-decorated catholic cathedral-wannabe we will hear his anger even from here down on Earth... :cool: (and having a rock concert in the middle of the Eixample grid would be also hell on earth for the neighbours... not the best acoustic conditions! .. that's what the reformed old Stadium and Arata Isozaki's Palau Sant Jordi at the 1992 Olympic Ring are for :D )
primocordara
24-10-2006, 12:29
I actually like the vaulted roof on image 29. That is the museum under "LA PEDRERA" roof, were the exhibition is.
Some idea on the Catalan brick vaults that influences Dieste...
david p - great pics - you didn't explain that this was the mothod Gaudi used to determine loads on columns etc. suspending the string shape and hanging scaled weights to create arcs etc. then, if the model is viewed upside down, like in a mirror, the final shape of the structure will be shown, and the loads known.
Medit - great summary and background material, thanks for adding.
Cheers
sorry tdmc about not explaining the method. i thought someone else talked about it in this thread? Gaudi was a true genius!:not worth
I (and most people I think), both as an architect and a citizen, find it to be a correct decision, you just can't have such a monumental thing without an open space in front -either for contemplation of the monument and for not having a residential block with this kind of built 'wall' in front-
this compromise makes sense to me. but still I don't understand why they actually built those blocks there. note that they started to build SF when there was nothing around. The streets of Eixample were already outlined but there were no houses. The photos of the early stages of construction are quite surprising - the church being erected in the middle of a deserted plain. see the image and some more + a detailed history in english at this site (http://www.gaudiallgaudi.com/EA012crono.htm).
so why did they leave the 2 blocks next to the side facades empty and not the blocks that tha main facade was supposed to face?
Concerning the stones' concert I don't think it's impossible. these bands have more power than you think. I heard about a legendary Pink Floyd concert on a pier opposite the San Marco square in Venice.
In Prague Rolling Stones and Michael Jackson and the Pope etc. usually come to a large plain surrounded by residential quarters. And almost noone complains... After all it's usually just a few hours and the showl ends at 10pm...
I did this international student workshop in Barcelona. We got to go on some pretty cool excursions and among the buildings we saw was La Sagrada Familia.
We were lucky enough to get permission to wander more or less freely around the building site, climb the scaffolding and snoop around. So we got to see the building from angles no tourists have access to. Thought some other people might find these pictures interesting.
cut stone, ready for assembly
window, photoshop is fu..... with me so I can't rotate this image, I've tried a 100 times.
above the main space, we took an elevator, it's amazingly high. So as you can see, the light will enter from the side in this space and down into the main space through those holes (which are covered by nets at the moment so people like me wont fall through)
these people are carving scale models of building components. The whole design department has offices inside the building.
and they model everything in the computer as well. I noticed they were using Autodesk mechanical desktop. Probably because of all the organic stuff.
one of the old towers
I don't get it! It's rotated in photoshop and it shows correctly in my file browser (finder in mac osx) but it doesn't upload correctly to PPB :confused:
Thats the last pic for now, just as well as I am about to throw my laptop in the wall.
Thank you for the beautiful pictures Marr. :D
yes, thank you very much for this!! You don't get to see this every day! it's a great contribution!
el-capitano
09-01-2007, 06:16
And to think that I had to walk around like a normal tourist- twice!!
I'm a jealous bastard now!
Great "behind the scenes" photos - thanks Marr!
One of the details I liked the most were the massive bronze (?) doors with inscriptions of what I suppose are passages of the Bible in catalan. Ocasionally a word or a sentence is highlighted in polished metal, contrasting with the overall dark color.
Here are a couple of pics to show you what I'm talking about.
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