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ANTONIO GAUDI BIOGRAPHY |
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by Juan Bassegoda Nonell
[Professor Juan Bassegoda Nonell has served as the director of the Royal Gaudi Chair at the School of Architecture within the Polytechnical University of Catalonia (Barcelona) since 1968. He is the author of many notable books on Gaudi, among them The Designs and Drawings of Antonio Gaudi, with George R. Collins.] Introduction The work of Antonio Gaudi Cornet (1852-1926) has transcended time, styles, and the period in which it was created. His achievement grew from his great capacity for observation and his fervent interest in nature. He was a passionate observer, learning directly from what he saw in the sky and the clouds, in water, rocks, plants, animals, and mountains. To understand Gaudi's achievement one must recognize that his work is not exclusively architectural. It is more than that: it is not architectural in the sense that historians understand architecture. Gaudi's work does not fit into traditional schemes that would place it within the narrow limits of a particular style, nor was he the outstanding disciple of any master. There had never been architects in the Gaudi family, only craftsmen, especially copper and iron smiths. He did not have the occupational idiosyncrasy that is characteristic of dynasties of architects. While he was extremely naive, he was also highly perspicacious. He saw things as they actually are, without prejudice, not as sometimes one might wish them to be. Juan Munne, a carpenter who worked with him for many years, said of him: "Gaudi is clear-minded." Throughout his career Gaudi made use of practical solutions that were both simple and functional, and through them he achieved surprising results. Observing Gaudi's architectural forms, one might think that his was either a complex or a convoluted mind. The sinuous facades of his buildings look like somewhat irrational, baroque conceptions. But this is not the case. Because his compositions are inspired by nature, they stand out from those of architects who have always utilized a simple geometry based on abstract forms, like the line or the plane, forms that are nonexistent in nature. In a logical process of simplification and abstraction, architects have developed designs and constructed buildings using only two auxiliary tools: the compass and the square. They have made use of these tools for drawing on a flat surface as well as for cutting stone or wood. From the plane and the straight line, both two-dimensional forms, one moves to three-dimensional forms, the regular polyhedrons, the cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, and pentagonal dodecahedron, forms that have been traditionally sanctified and identified with the elements of earth, fire, water, air, and the quintessential, as proposed by Plato in his Timaeus and developed by his followers. If these forms can be drawn with a square, the compass serves for drawing circles and spheres, forms that have always been used by architects. In the architecture of every age, made with the help of a compass and square, all pillars can be described as prisms, all columns cylinders, all domes hemispheres, and all roofs dihedral angles or pyramids. This last form, so much loved by architects, is found from the pharonic pyramids of Giza built several thousand years ago to the recent courtyard entrance of the Louvre in Paris by I. M. Pei. Gaudi's ingenuous observation of nature led him to see that these regular forms either do not exist in nature or, if they do, only rarely. When pyrite cubes are found, or prisms crowned with rock crystal, or pentagonal dodecahedrons of cinnabar, they are kept in museums of natural history as rare and curious objects. In the light of the country landscape of Tarragona, Gaudi was moved by the beauty of natural forms. He was able to contemplate them at leisure during the summers spent in a little country house in the village of Riudoms. There, he observed that nature produces beautiful, decorative forms in the mineral, animal, and plant realms. At the same time, he understood that nature did not intend to create works of art but rather elements that were above all functional and useful. The brilliant color and agreeable fragrance of roses is not devised to inspire poets or painters but rather to attract insects and to encourage the reproductive function of the plant. An absolutely functional purpose. When Gaudi used the forms of plants, flowers, or animals in the decoration of his buildings, he took the natural forms just as they are in reality and not with the intention of so many architects over the course of history who have used them as an artistic intellectualization, submitting them to symmetries, dissymmetries, or compositional artifices. Gaudi's conclusion was a very simple one. If an architect looks for the functional in his work, he will ultimately arrive at beauty. If he looks for beauty directly, he will only reach art theory, aesthetics, or philosophy, abstract ideas that never interested Gaudi. Moreover, he was able to see an infinity of magnificent structural forms in nature. If nature works by always looking for final solutions, since it is subject to the inexorable law of gravity, there is great wisdom in studying natural structures, which have been accredited by millions of years of perfect functioning. Knowing the essence of these structures, Gaudi sought to bring them to the arena of building. He observed that in nature many structures are composed of fibrous materials, such as wood, bone, muscle, or tendon. From the viewpoint of geometry, fibers are straight lines and curved surfaces in space made up of straight lines that define a straight-line geometry, which is based on just four distinct surfaces: the helicoid, the hyperboloid, the conoid, and the hyperbolic paraboloid. Gaudi saw these surfaces in nature and brought them to architecture. The helicoid is the form of a tree trunk, and Gaudi used this form in the columns of the Teresian School. The hyperboloid is the form of the femur, a form he used in the columns of the Sagrada Familia. The conoid is a form frequently found in the leaves of trees, and this form he used in the roofs of the Provisional Schools of the Sagrada Familia. The hyperbolic paraboloid is formed by the tendons between the fingers of the hand, and he built with this form the porch domes of the church crypt in the Guell Estate. Gaudi had an innate sense of statics, which manifested itself in a simple, logical manner in the stereostatic model for the church of the Guell Estate. Once the ground floor of the church was drawn to a scale of 1:10 on a wooden panel, it was placed on the workshop ceiling and cords were suspended from it at the points where the pillars were assumed to begin. Hung above the catenaries formed by the cords were canvas sacks containing lead shot that weighed ten thousand times less than the weight the arch would have to support. The sacks of lead shot produced a warping of the cords. A photograph was then made of the inverted model. The photograph yielded the absolutely precise and exact form of the building's structure, with no need for mathematical calculations or drawings of any kind and with no possibility of error. The shapes of the cords corresponded to the lines of tension of the warped structure, and when the photograph was inverted the structure's lines of pressure were obtained. This simple, exact method attracted the attention of engineers and designers. All of Gaudi's architecture is created by these intuitive, elemental methods, which permitted him to achieve equilibrated forms very like those found in nature. The bell towers of the Sagrada Familia are revolving paraboloids, and they correspond to the forms wet sand adopts when dropped from a height: they are perfectly balanced arrangements based on the law of gravity. Gaudi believed that an architect must have an innate sense of equilibrium. The architect conceives the structure of a building and then passes its form on to the engineer who calculates the form mathematically. If the engineer pronounces the structure stable, all goes well; if he does not, Gaudi used to say, the architect must change, not his design but his profession. He would better dedicate himself to the theater or to politics, but not to building. Moreover, Gaudi had a great advantage over other architects. As a child he was trained to be an iron smith in the forge of an uncle in Reus. After that, in the workshop of Eudaldo Punti in Barcelona, he became familiar with carpentry, iron casting, and modeling in plaster. This training enabled him later to direct his workmen in logical ways that were easily understood. He always relied on the same workmen, and when they grew old and retired he trained others. He did not like to draw his designs but rather to build models. He always used traditional techniques and achieved surprising results with them. In many of his buildings he made use of the boveda tabicada, or Catalan vault, a timbrel-vault construction system that had been in frequent use since the fifteenth century, a slender shell vault formed by only two or three layers of brick joined with plaster or mortar at their small faces. By means of this procedure he not only constructed vaults in the forms of hyperbolic paraboloids or hyperboloids but also created a sculptural three-dimensionality that was totally new. The chimneys and ventilators as well as the stairway exits of the Casa Mila, forms of great sculptural beauty, were all built in this way, as were the roofs of Bellesguard and the Casa Batllo. Fortunately, Gaudi had an extraordinary Maecenas in Don Eusebio Guell (from 1910, the Count of Guell), who allowed Gaudi to develop his ideas in absolute freedom. Guell became acquainted with Gaudi's work through a simple showcase design exhibited in 1878 at the Universal Exposition in Paris. Returning to Barcelona, Guell searched out the author of the design. From that time until Guell's death in 1918, he and Gaudi were inseparable. Their friendship of more than forty years was much more than a relationship between client and architect. In 1906 each went to live in his own respective house in the Park Guell, and there they were in contact on an almost daily basis. For Eusebio Guell, Gaudi designed the pavilions of the Guell Estate (1884-1887), the Palacio Guell (1886-1888), the Guell Cellars (1895-1897), the Crypt of the Guell Estate church (1908-1917), the Park Guell (1900-1914), and other smaller works. The architect reached exquisite extremes of purity in his architecture of straight-line geometry in his retreat at the Sagrada Familia. There he received many visitors to whom he explained his architectural theories. Gaudi began to direct the work on the Sagrada Familia in 1883, and he continued this work until June 7, 1926, three days before his death from an accident in which he was struck down by a streetcar. Some of Gaudi's sayings were collected by young architects who admired the master's work, including Juan Bergos, Cesar Martinell, J.F. Rafols, and Isidro Puig Boada. A number of them are worth quoting: "Wisdom is superior to science, it comes from 'sapere' or to savor; it refers to the concrete act. Elegance is the sister of poverty, but one must not confuse poverty with misery." "Art, which is masculine, nurtures science which is feminine. Sight is the sense of Glory, hearing is the sense of Faith. The ideal quality of a work of art is harmony, which in the visual arts comes from light that gives relief and decorates. Architecture is the ordering of light." Most of Gaudi's remarks were collected by his followers, since Gaudi was not fond of writing. He published only one article during his lifetime, but he was very talkative and liked to explain the church of the Sagrada Familia to visiting groups. On Sunday mornings he customarily attended Mass in the cathedral and then took a long walk as far as the lighthouse on the cliff at the harbor. His usual companion was the architect Juan Bergos, who wrote down many excerpts from the maestro's long monologues, which he was not able to interrupt. Cesar Martinell often visited Gaudi in his workshop and recorded some of his most interesting remarks. All of these were collected in the book The Thinking of Gaudi (El pensament de Gaudi) (1976) by Puig Boada. Rafois worked in Gaudi's office in the church of the Sagrada Familia for more than two years, and in 1929 he published the first biography of the master. In it he reproduced many of the drawings from the Gaudi archive that was burned by the Anarchists in July 1936. References to Gaudi's youth are very scarce. We have only the certificate of his baptism in the church of Saint Peter in Reus, dated June 26, 1852; his grades from the school where he received his secondary school diploma; and his academic record from Barcelona's School of Architecture where he obtained his title of architect on March 15, 1878. Gaudi remained a bachelor until his death, living with his family until he remained alone late in his life. As a student, he shared lodgings in inexpensive inns with his brother Francisco, a medical student. After that, he lived with his father and his orphan niece, Rosa Egea Gaudi, first in several different houses in Barcelona and then from 1906 onward in the Park Guell house, the model house that had never been purchased. There, his father died, at ninety-three, in 1906 and his niece Rosa in 1912. Good friends of Gaudi's youthful years included Eduardo Toda, who became a diplomat; Jose Ribera, later a professor of medicine; the sculptor Lorenzo Matamala; and the architect Juan Martorell. Martorell was a great help to Gaudi because he introduced him to the study of graphic statics, which at the time was not taught at the School of Architecture. In addition, he recommended Gaudi as architect for the Sagrada Familia and introduced him to the Comillas and the Guell famlies. Gaudi used to say of Martorell that he was both a wise man and a saint. Gaudi received two decisive lessons in his life from Martorell: an acquaintance with Neogothic architecture and an introduction to graphic statics. The first lesson enabled him to understand the medieval style, which was eminently applicable to building, and the second enabled him to go beyond Gothic solutions and penetrate the world of equilibrated forms. When Gaudi assumed the supervision of the project at the Sagrada Familia in 1883 through Martorell's influence, he encountered a strictly Neogothic structure begun the year before by the architect Francisco Villar Lozano, who had initiated work on the crypt. In his first design, signed in March 1885, Gaudi worked in the manner of Martorell, but eight years later he had already formalized in theory his general idea of the new church with its absolutely original forms. From 1890 until his death in 1926, Gaudi prepared four distinct solutions for the structure, each time further refining the style and the ingenious static arrangement. He made plaster models in several scales of the entire temple and of its details. Although these models were destroyed in July 1936, their reconstruction has enabled Gaudi's successors to continue his work at the church. Gaudi had many admirers in his own time, but he never concerned himself with publicizing his work. In 1910 Eusebio Guell spent a sizable sum mounting a large-scale Gaudi exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. Filling the entire ground floor of the building were models, drawings, and photographs of Gaudi's work. But Gaudi refused to go to Paris, and the exhibition was celebrated without him. His vocation was exclusively architectural, indeed his entire life was devoted to architecture. He never married, he did not write (except for his article of 1881), he rarely traveled, he did not become involved in politics. His only diversion was his beloved architecture. Gaudi was a shy, ingenuous man of great sensitivity, capable of understanding architectural forms by observing nature. Very attached to his native region and his family, he retained the Catalan accent of the Reus area all his life, and he believed that that part of Catalonia was ideal for artistic creation. Jan Molema, the Dutch engineer who has studied Gaudi, commented that the architect believed that the nearer to Reus a person was born the more intelligent that person was. Putting exaggeration aside, Gaudi in truth thought that the Mediterranean basin was the optimal birthplace for works of art. The light there falls at about 45 degrees and illuminates objects perfectly, so that they can be seen without the slightest distortion. Mediterranean people, according to Gaudi, are synthetists, just as Northerners are analysts. Analysis is necessary for understanding the secrets of the world, but artistic creation requires synthesis. His great love for the landscape and terrain of the Mediterranean countries grew as it was filtered through his religious spirit. He loved nature in the same way that Saint Francis of Assisi had loved it. If nature is the work of God and architectural forms are derived from nature, this means that the work of the Creator is being continued. Gaudi said that God continued the Creation through man, and he tried to be worthy of this creative act. His religiosity was active and he did not limit himself to following the advice of ecclesiastics. He often entered into discussions with them, although generally he settled for the friendship of distinguished churchmen, like the bishops of Vic, Mallorca, and Astorga. Gaudi liked to discuss liturgical subjects, but he chose to avoid conversations on theology. He always preferred the concrete to the abstract. His architecture is highly poetic, but he disliked written poetry. He said that verse gave him a headache, but this did not rule out his friendships with poets such as Fr. Jacinto Verdaguer or Francesch Matheu. Gaudi always expressed himself through architecture. In his doctoral thesis on Gaudi, the Taiwanese architect Hou Teh-Chien maintains that Gaudi realized a metaphoric architecture, that he was a philosopher who expressed his ideas by constructing buildings. Gaudi did not read books on philosophy or architecture. He assiduously read "L'Annee Liturgique," by the Abbot of Solesmes, Dom Gueranger, a liturgical calendar that explained the religious feasts and the ways of celebrating them. Asked once what his favorite architectural treatise was, Gaudi gestured through his studio window saying that the tree outside was his favorite book on architecture. His architectural production is limited to a small number of buildings, although the Sagrada Familia alone is much more than a building. Since 1969, seventeen of his works have become national monuments in Spain and they are protected by law. Gaudi was given to constantly perfecting his works, never considering them finished. Moreover, he constructed a building integrally, from its foundation and structural framework to the smallest decorative and ornamental detail. He designed furniture, windows, wrought iron accessories, and every type of auxiliary element, never repeating any model. Each Gaudi building has its own special characteristics and looks like none of the others. Each was conceived in its integrity and constitutes a unity in which all of the elements are perfectly coordinated and exclusive to that building. When Gaudi died in 1926, the new Bauhaus building designed by Walter Gropius had just been erected. This was the culminating moment of rationalism, of Le Corbusier, Siegfried Giedion, and the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne. This architecture of simple geometric forms, of purely abstract conception, was at odds with the work of Gaudi, which was considered baroque and irrational. The next generation of architects continued to understand guadian thought in a similar way, and it was not until the Gaudi exhibition of 1952, on the centenary of his birth, that critics and scholarly writers began to discover the value of his architecture. The flood of books, articles, courses, lectures, and enthusiasm for Gaudi came later. But those least interested in Gaudi have been the architects who, inspired by the work of the reputed masters, have repeated their solutions a thousand and one times. Gaudi presents the problem of an inimitable personality, and all the attempts that have been made to imitate him have failed. Looking toward the future, the lesson of Gaudi is not to copy his solutions but rather to look at nature for inspiration. There is such a variety of solutions in natural forms that there is never a risk of repetition. Gaudi found amazing structures by working in a rational, logical way and, moreover, in a timeless fashion. Unlike historic styles, nature does not go out of fashion. During the Roman era, oaks, cypresses, and ilexes grew around the temples. When the great Gothic works were built, the oaks, cypresses, and ilexes continued to grow around them. Today, surrounding the buildings of steel and glass, the same trees still grow. They continue to give us pleasure because we never tire of nature. One never becomes tired of the architecture of Gaudi, because he looked directly to nature for solutions. His work continues to delight us today, just as it did when he was alive. It is an architecture beyond time, because he did not propose to make art but rather to make functional and useful forms. Gaudi's famous phrase, originality is returning to the original means that the origin of all things is nature, created by God. Early Work 1870-1885 Gaudi began his architectural studies at the University of Barcelona in 1869. Economic constraints obliged him to work as a draftsman for a number of different architects and for the master builder Jose Fontsere Mestres, director of works for the new Park of the Ciudadela. Working in the eclectic style of the time, Gaudi designed the balustrade of the plaza that was later named Aribau and the iron fence that encloses the park area. He also collaborated on the design of the metal structure for the Borne market and made a drawing for a fountain in the center of the market. Unfortunately, the drawing was destroyed, although both designs and photographs survive. In the course of his studies, Gaudi made a series of designs for required subjects. The coloration and exquisiteness of his watercolor drawings are remarkable. Among these designs are a cemetery arch, a large fountain for the Plaza Cataluna, a patio for a public building, a wharf, and, as a final project, a university assembly hall. Beginning in 1873, Gaudi collaborated on the construction of housing, a factory workers' club, and a machine shop for the Mataro Cooperative, the first complex of its kind to be established in Spain. The cooperative was based on the idea of a worker-owned factory, a concept that interested Gaudi and was consonant with his youthful ideas on social problems. He also designed the company's banner, and in 1885 he directed the decoration of the factory shop for a large celebration for the workers' families, converting the shop's interior into a forest that caused a great stir at the event. In 1878 Gaudi received an assignment from the Barcelona city council to design two models for gas street lamps, to be located on the principal streets and plazas of the city. One of the two prototypes had three branches and the other six. He combined a stone base with a cast iron and bronze shaft and branches and lamps of opaline glass. In an extensive report, Gaudi demonstrated that he had thoroughly studied the gas lighting systems of the world's great cities. Ultimately, only two gas lamps with six branches were installed in the Plaza Real and two with three branches in the Plaza de Palacio. Although Gaudi's work of this initial period is very exceptional, it does not yet reflect his own personal style. Eastern Influence 1883-1888 A trend in architectural style that combined the Neogothic with the exotic began to develop in Europe during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In Spain some architects looked to foreign schools of architecture for inspiration. Luis Domenech Montaner and Jose Vilaseca Casanovas were attracted to German architecture, which was in the ascendancy after the Franco-Prussian War. Gaudi, who had read Walter Pater and John Ruskin, looked to the exoticism of English architecture as well as to the Far East, especially to the architecture of India, Persia, and Japan. Four extant youthful works show Gaudi's clear interest in the Far East. El Capricho (1883-1885), in Northern Spain on the shore of the Cantabrico Sea in the town of Comillas, is a building formerly covered in glass tiles, with a tall, slender cylindrical tower that resembles a minaret from Isfahan. El Capricho does not yet display technical innovations, but it represents a step forward in his personal style. The Casa Vicens (1993-1888), in the Barcelona suburb of Gracia, also partakes of these Eastern forms, especially in its use of glass tiles. In this project, Gaudi introduces the use of the catenary arch in the garden waterfall and naturalism in the grill-work with cast-iron palm leaves. For the house, he also studied furniture design and interior decoration using papier-mache in vivid colors. For the Guell Estate (1884-1887), on the outskirts of Barcelona, Gaudi constructed among other elements the porter's house, the stables, and the riding ring at the entrance to the extensive park surrounding the house of Don Eusebio Guell. The exteriors of these structures have a brilliant oriental look, thanks to their ceramic embellishments, but the interiors offer new structural forms: arches and vaults with catenary profiles and hyperbolic domes. The Palacio Guell (1886-1888), in the ancient quarter of Barcelona, is an overwhelming work, with many new solutions to the structuring and distribution of spaces and volumes, combined with an equal measure of Eastern influences. Some of the decoration is by Gaudi, although the painters Alejo Clapes and Alejandro de Riquer and the architect Camilo Oliveras also were involved. Neogothicism 1883-1909 Gaudi had both a protector and a colleague in the architect Juan Martorell Montells (1833-1906), a very religious man who built churches and convents in the Neogothic style of the era, following the ideas of the architect and theorist-writer Viollet-le-Duc. Gaudi collaborated with Martorell on several projects and learned this style from him. Gaudi believed the Gothic was the most structural of historic styles. Renaissance architects, he said, are merely decorators. After studying Gothic buildings, he conceived a way of perfecting medieval structural solutions. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, he made a series of designs in the Neogothic idiom of Martorell. Gaudi decorated the chapel of the schools of nuns at Saint Andrew of Palomar (Barcelona) (1880) and The School of Jesus-Mary in Tarragona (1879) with altars, and choir stalls that were purely Neogothic. In this style too is the design for the chapel of the Holy Sacrament in the parish church of Saint Felix of Alella (1883), although the work was not realized. For Don Jose Bocabella, who promoted the construction of the church of the Sagrada Famlia, he designed a Neogothic altar of carved wood. In 1887 Gaudi was charged with completing the Teresian School for nuns in San Gervasio, begun by another architect. Gaudi subsequently modified the initial design but was unable to alter the building's rectangular form, since the first floor had already been built. The structure was crowned with battlements appropriate to a medieval fortress, but the elegant, well-composed ensembles of brick catenary arches of its interior produced a strongly inspired, absolutely novel effect. In 1887 he also began to design the palace of the bishop of Astorga (Leon), a Catalan who had been in touch with Gaudi for many years. This building was made of granite, and its original composition has a strong Gothic character, especially in the ogival vaults of the ground and first floors. Gaudi abandoned supervision of the work in 1893, and the present roofs do not correspond to the original design. While he was working at Astorga, Gaudi was engaged to do a business and apartment block in Leon, the Casa de los Botines (Casa Fernandez y Andres; 1891-1892), situated on the Plaza de San Marcelo. Built of limestone, it is Neogothic in its lines with a very original roof system of slate. At the basement and ground levels were the shops and offices of a textile business. Bellesguard (1900-1909) is a different case. It is an isolated building on a slope of the Collserola mountains, in a place once occupied by a medieval summer house belonging to King Martin I of Aragon. As a memorial to the king, Gaudi conceived a work inspired by the Catalan Gothic style of the fifteenth century, although he introduced daring new structural solutions. Naturalism 1895-1916 Gaudi's most creative period corresponds to the completely free development of his ideas based on an architecture inspired by nature. Understanding that in nature there is no straight line or plane and that by contrast there is an immense variety of curved forms, he changed the normal procedure of designing on a plane surface and launched directly into the third dimension, making use of every kind of model. He made them of wood, plaster, clay, metal screening, wet cardboard, and wire. Gaudi's love of nature was based on his attentive, naive observation of the forms of plants, animals, and mountains. He admired the beauty of all these forms, recognizing that nature's purpose is not aesthetic but functional. Nature does not try to make works of art but rather elements that rule the growth and reproduction of species. He concluded that in looking for function, one arrives at beauty, and that the direct search for beauty leads only to philosophy, aesthetics, or art theory. Gaudi was a simple man, an enemy of abstract ideas, a man who knew how to see the reality of things without prejudice or professional bias. Among Guadi's naturalistic works is the Casa Calvet (1898-1899). On the building's facade he placed a collection of mushrooms to please his patron, Senor Calvet, who was a micologist. The facade design was made first in the form of a plaster model to a scale of 1:10. In the Guell Cellars (1895-1897), on the outskirts of Garraf, he erected a building in the locale's native stone, which is in perfect harmony with the rocky contour of the coast. The concept of naturalism becomes more evident in the Park Guell (1900-1914). Here the architect planned the streets to adapt to the rough topography, constructing viaducts so that the terrain's original contours were left unchanged. He built with the native stone and even took advantage of the ruins of a cave, distributing its rocks of different colors harmoniously throughout the grounds. The Casa Batlllo (1904-1906) and the Casa Mila (1906-1911) were the culmination of his naturalist architecture. The Casa Batllo, covered with pieces of colored glass ceramic, and the Casa Mila, with its cliff-like aspect, seem to be symbols of sea and earth. Other examples of this way of working can be seen in the stained glass of the Cathedral of Mallorca (1903-1914), in the Resurrection of Christ on the Mountain of Montserrat (1903-1916), and in other lesser works. Nature is reflected in Gaudi's architecture like trees on the surface of a lake. Straight-Line Geometry 1908-1917 Gaudi was never able to understand why architects based their buildings on the simple geometry of line and plane and on regular solid forms, since such forms either do not exist, or exist only rarely, in nature. Nature, by contrast, makes extraordinary structures with fibrous elements that constitute bone, wood, muscle, and tendon -- a geometry of straight lines in space forming four types of surfaces: helicoids, conoids, hyperboloids, and hyperbolic paraboloids. These are surfaces that are ubiquitous in nature and for this reason useful and functional, like a work by nature, surfaces that have scarcely been employed by architects. The application of a straight-line geometry and the catenary arch, another mechanical and functional form that occurs often in nature, was constant in Gaudi's architecture. He initially used catenary arches, for example, in the stables of the Guell Estate and in the waterfall of the Casa Vicens, hyperboloids in the Palacio Guell columns, and hyperbolic paraboloids in the porter's house at the Park Guell. This type of geometry clearly manifests itself in two of his most significant works. In 1909 Gaudi was commissioned to build a low-cost structure to house the Provisional Schools of the Sagrada Familia until the church was completed. Classrooms and workshops would then be located in the church half-basements. Using only Catalan brick vault construction -- the boveda tabicada, or board vault -- he built a structure with undulating walls and roof, a roof composed of a conoid form joined by iron I-beams that served as directives. Using this system he erected a school with three classrooms at a minimal cost. This simple but highly inspired work by Gaudi has had wide dissemination among architects through Le Corbusier's drawing and commentaries made during his stay in Barcelona in 1928. Nevertheless, full development of Gaudi's greatest geometric refinement occurs in the church of the Sagrada Famlia. He reached this stage between 1916 and 1926, working with plaster models to a scale of 1:25 for the entire building and of 1:10 for the structure of the naves. These models were destroyed in 1936 and restored about 1939. Now on exhibition in the church museum, the models enable the understanding and completion of the work of converting the Sagrada Familia into an authentic school of architecture, where architects of different nationalities can work and study with the most advanced technology. Gaudi's seclusion in the Sagrada Familia, with no desire to accept other commissions, can be explained by his personal interest in leaving his geometric naturalist theory of architecture sufficiently developed for others to complete. He chose to focus on his master work and to open great possibilities for new generations of architects. Definitive Style 1892-1926 Gaudi's definitive style was developed, and continues to be developed, in the work of the Sagrada Familia, an edifice that he said would take several generations to complete. The Sagrada Familia is an analytical laboratory for studying the methods and solutions based on straight-line geometry and equilibrated structures. But the process Gaudi followed to reach the forms he used in the work of the Sagrada Famlia, especially during the last period of his life, between 1914 and 1926, began to take shape much earlier in two other designs that were not carried out but are of particular interest. In 1892 the second Marquis of Comillas commissioned a design for the Franciscan Catholic Missions in Tangiers (Morocco) that would include a church, schools, and a hospital. Gaudi estimated that he could complete the project within a year. The idea was finally abandoned because the Franciscans found the building too large and luxurious. Its central tower would have soared to 1,968 feet (60 meters), and the axes of its quadrilobed plan extended to about 1,968 feet as well (60 x 60 meters). The inclined walls, hyperboloid windows, and revolving paraboloid towers were not built. However, the form intended for the Tangiers towers was put to use in the towers of the Sagrada Famlia, which were begun in 1903. Gaudi was very disappointed by the failure to build the Tangiers mission, and when he next had a chance to design a large-scale building, he opted for equilibrated design solutions like those of the Tangiers design. In 1908 he received a visit from two American entrepreneurs who engaged him to design a hotel in New York City. Gaudi imagined a building almost 9,843 feet (300 meters) tall with a catenary profile that would achieve a perfect structural equilibrium. The project was not carried out, surely because of an illness that left Gaudi extremely weak between 1901 and 1910. These two unrealized experimental designs were magnificent incentives to advance toward the definitive forms of the Sagrada Familia. The elegant towers of the Tangiers design and the colossal daring of the New York project permitted Gaudi to realize the final structural model for the Sagrada Famlia, refining to the utmost his studies of the straight-line surfaces of hyperboloids and hyperbolic paraboloids, and of the slender, rational, highly elegant shapes of the columns for the church's main nave. In 1909, moreover, shortly after his interview with the American clients, he constructed the small building for the provisional parish school of the Sagrada Familia. Its roof is a board vault in the shape of a director-plane conoid, a highly stable and economical straight-line surface. With this solution he brought to a close his study of both small and gigantic forms, a study that extends from the school of the Sagrada Familia to the Tangiers design to the hotel for New York. All of this became a splendid reality in the structural models for the Sagrada Familia, which were converted into a tangible reality after the master's death. [From "Antonio Gaudi, Master Architect," by Juan Bassegoda Nonell, Photography by Melba Levick]
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