The son of a coppersmith, Antoni Gaudí was born on June 25,
1852, and took to architecture at a young age. He attended school in Barcelona,
the city that would become home to most of his great works. Gaudí was part of
the Catalan Modernista movement, eventually transcending it with his
nature-based organic style. Gaudí died on June 10, 1926, in Barcelona, Spain.
QUOTES
"My client can wait."
– Antoni Gaudí
Architect Antoni Gaudí was born in Catalonia on the
Mediterranean coast of Spain on June 25, 1852. He showed an early interest in
architecture, and went to study in Barcelona—Spain's most modern city at the
time—circa 1870. After his studies were interrupted by military service, Gaudí
graduated from the Provincial School of Architecture in 1878.
Upon graduation, Gaudí initially worked in the artistic vein
of his Victorian predecessors, but he soon developed his own style, composing
his works with juxtapositions of geometric masses and animating the surfaces
with patterned brick or stone, bright ceramic tiles and floral or reptilian
metalwork. The salamander in Park Güell, for instance, is
representative of Gaudí's work.
During his early period, at the Paris World's Fair of
1878, Gaudí displayed a showcase he had produced, which impressed one patron
enough to lead to Gaudí's working on the Güell Estate and
Güell Palace, among others. In 1883, Gaudí was charged with the
construction of a Barcelona cathedral called Basilica i Temple Expiatori
de la Sagrada Familia (Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family). The
plans had been drawn up earlier, and construction had already begun, but Gaudí
completely changed the design, stamping it with his own distinctive style.
Gaudí also soon experimented with various permutations of
historic styles: the Episcopal Palace (1887–'93) and the Casa de los Botines
(1892–'94), both Gothic, and the Casa Calvet (1898–1904), which was done in the
Baroque style. Some of these commissions were the result of the 1888 World's
Fair, at which Gaudí once again staged an impressive showcase.
After 1902, Antoni Gaudí's designs began to defy
conventional stylistic classification, and he created a type of structure known
as equilibrated—that is, it could stand on its own without internal bracing,
external buttressing, etc. The primary functional elements of this system were
columns that tilted to employ diagonal thrusts and lightweight tile vaults.
Notably, Gaudí used his equilibrated system to construct two Barcelona
apartment buildings: the Casa Batlló (1904–06) and the Casa Milà (1905–10),
whose floors were structured like clusters of tile lily pads. Both projects are
considered to be characteristic of Gaudí's style.
Increasingly pious, after 1910, Gaudí abandoned nearly all
other work to focus on the Sagrada Familia, which he had begun in 1883,
cloistering himself onsite and living in its workshop.
While employing Gaudí's equilibrated methods, the church
would borrow from the cathedral-Gothic and Art Nouveau styles but present them
in a form beyond recognition.
Gaudí died while still working on the Sagrada Familia on
June 10, 1926, in Barcelona, Spain. He died after getting hit by a trolley car
in Barcelona,
only a few weeks shy of his 75th birthday. While the
structure remained unfinished at his death in 1926—only one transept with one
of four towers was built—the extraordinary structure has a final completion
target date of 2026, to mark the 100th anniversary of his passing.
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