Gaudi's Masterpiece
by Jeremy Berlin
National Geographic
December 2010
"My client is not in a hurry,” Antoni Gaudi used to say. The pious architect was speaking of God, explaining why the Roman Catholic Sagrada Familia church was taking so long to complete. Nearly a century later it remains a work in progress--a dream of spires and ornate facades rising hundreds of feet above downtown Barcelona drawing the eyes (and euros) of some two million visitors a year. This November Pope Benedict XVI consecrated it as a basilica. A final completion date of 2026 appears likely. And if history begets history, the time is ripe to reappraise Gaudi's epic endeavor--[and the prescient ideas behind it.
The Sagrada Familia has always been revered and reviled. The surrealists claimed Gaudi as one of their own, while George Orwell called the church "one of the most hideous buildings in the world.” As idiosyncratic as Gaudi himself, it is a vision inspired by the architect's religious faith and love of nature. He understood that the natural world is rife with curved forms, not straight lines. [i.e. the universe is “rife” with non-linear dynamics, not just simple lines of causation]. And he noticed that natural construction tends to favor sinewy materials such as wood, muscle, and tendon [i.e. strong but flexible, adaptable]. With these organic models in mind, Gaudi based his buildings on a simple premise: If nature is the work of God, and if architectural forms are derived from nature, then the best way to honor God is to design buildings based on his work.
As the Barcelona scholar Joan Bassegoda Nonell notes, "Gaudi's famous phrase, 'originality is returning to the origin,' means that the origin of all things is nature, created by God.” [similarly, "recreation" is re-creating an enjoyable, purposeful sense of existence, and "religion is re-connecting with the universe]. Gaudi's faith was his own. But his belief in the beautiful efficiency of natural engineering clearly anticipated the modern science of biomimetics.
Born in 1852 near the town of Reus, Gaudi grew up fascinated by geometry and the natural wonders of the Catalonian countryside. After architecture school, he eventually forged his own style--a synthesis of neo-Gothic, art nouveau, and Eastern elements. For Gaudi, form and function were inseparable; one found aesthetic beauty only by seeking structural efficiency, which rules the natural world. [i.e. one finds truth only by seeking the structural efficiency of networks, which compose the universe], "Nothing is art if it does not come from nature," he concluded.
In 1883 Gaudi inherited the Sagrada Familia from another architect, who had laid a traditional neo-Gothic base. Gaudi envisioned a soaring visual narrative of Christ's life, but knew that the massive project could not be completed in his lifetime. For more than 12 years prior to his death in 1926--he spent his last year living at the site--he rendered his plans as geometric three dimensional models rather than as conventional drawings [i.e. find unorthodox, symbolic and other creative ways to help others envision what you can see]. Though many were destroyed by vandals during the Spanish Civil War, those models have been vital to Gaudi's successors.
"They contain the entire building's structural DNA," explains Mark Burry, an Australia-based architect who has worked on the Sagrada Familia for 31 years, using drawings and computer technology to help translate Gaudi's designs for today's craftsmen. " You can extract the architectural whole even from fragments [e.g. Gurdjieff's “fragments of an unknown teaching” Ouspensky compiled into “In Search Of The Miraculous”]. The models are how Gaudi met the architect's challenge: taking a complex, holistic idea and explicating it so others can understand and continue it after your death."
Adrian Bejan, distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University (whose "constructal law" states that design in nature is a universal phenomenon of physics [and design in the universe is cosmic phenomenon of metaphysics]) says the facades of the Sagrada Familia are based on the golden ratio, the geometric proportion "behind all aesthetically pleasing art.” He calls Gaudi a forebear and a "tightrope walker" on the line bridging art and science [i.e. those bridging religion and science]. He understood that nature is constructed by laws of mathematics. [e.g. the number of flower petals, shell spirals, scores in pineapple rind, concentric rings of sunflower seeds, etc. are always Fibonacci numbers (i.e. each number is the sum of the previous two: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 …] What is strongest is inherently lightest, and most efficient, and therefore most beautiful." [i.e. who is strongest are those least restrained by the “gravity” of their lower selves, and most useful to the universe, and therefore most beautiful].
At the heart of Gaudi's vision is a timeless truth. As Bassegoda writes: "Looking toward the future, the lesson of Gaudi is not to copy his solutions but rather to look at nature for inspiration ... nature does not go out of fashion. " ["The universe is a trend-setter with a timeless style that exudes energy and creativity"].
