by admin » Tue Dec 11, 2018 12:12 am
WORKS
Gaudi's earliest works, including his projects as an architectural student [20] and the commissions in which he collaborated as an apprentice, varied in style between the medieval revival and a rather sumptuous eclecticism that he must have learned in school. Some of them already showed his delight in contrasting materials, such as ironwork against masonry; Barcelona was famous for its wealth of cast-iron decoration, and Gaudi's early designs, especially his street lights, show him to be already expert at this. However, in the big commissions like the medieval camarin at Montserrat which he did with the architect del Villa [21] and the Beaux Arts park decorations in Barcelona done with the maestro Fontsere, [22] it seems quite impossible to isolate Gaudi's contribution. The Park cascade (plate 9) was, in fact, a frank copy of the Longchamps cascada in Marseilles by Henri Esperandieu, of which they had a photograph. [23]
The two commissions were important ones, as would be a municipal park in the center of modern Barcelona and any work associated with the sacred shrine of Montserrat, but more important for our architect was his association with the medieval revivalist Juan Martorell. [24] Much of Martorell's work seems to be rather ordinary Victorianism to us now, but as a personality he loomed large in the architectural profession of his day. He helped introduce to Catalonia the rational Gothicism of the Frenchman Viollet-le-Duc as well as Ruskin's social interpretation of the style. Martorell was a deeply devout man, much admired by Gaudi, who called him a saint. Gaudi learned greatly from his example and soon succeeded him as the giant of Catalan architecture. His rival in this respect was another young associate of Martorell's, Luis Domenech y Montaner. [25] The enthusiasm for the medieval which architects like Gaudi and Domenech derived from their association with Martorell was further ignited by the influence of Elias Rogent, an originator of the medieval revival in Catalonia and Director of the School of Architecture. [26]
Upon completion of architectural school in 1878, Gaudi lost no time in launching his career. The several works carried out or begun in that year are crucial ones. These include furniture design--an aspect of architecture which he never disdained and which shows him to be in step with the modern desire to weave a complete environment for the patron whenever possible. Invited to design the furniture for Martorell's Gothic chapel in Comillas, he did his medieval best (plate 96, plate 97, plate 98 and plate 99). [27] This opened to him the patronage of the wealthy family of the Marques of Comillas, while the interest of Eusebio Guell, who was married to a daughter of the marques, was attracted by Gaudi's work for the Exposition of Paris in the same year. Also in 1878 he began his association with the workers' cooperative of Mataro. [28] This project was apparently so elaborate, with its machine shed, workers' housing, business and social buildings, that its plans were exhibited at the Paris Exposition. Actually, no more than the machinery hall and an adjacent kiosk (fig. 12) were executed, leaving the architect somewhat disillusioned about such pipe dreams. The shed is a bare, simple building, but of considerable interest structurally (fig. 1). Mechanical efficiency is obtained by the nearly parabolic profile of the arches. Cheapness was achieved by the use of wooden planks throughout, of short length and laminated (three-ply) wherever possible, secured by simple bolts. Today, eighty years later, it is as good as new.
The house that Gaudi started for Manuel Vicens in 1878 was a beginning not only for himself, but also the start of a new tradition in Catalan architecture (plate 10, plate 11, plate 12). With its novel use of a rich earth-colored rubble bound with brightly-painted tiles (azulejos), it marked the complete abandonment of classical and rational design for individual inspiration and whimsy--the final triumph of romanticism over the cold classicism that had characterized Spanish architecture of the early nineteenth century. If Gaudi had recourse to any style of art in the design of the building it was the Moslem. However, Catalonia had had no Moslem tradition, and the Casa Vicens looks like nothing in Spain or in Spanish Africa. Perhaps it should be called "Mudejar" (the Spanish term for hybrid Moslem)--Gaudi's own mixture of tilework, oddly-shaped arches, miradors (look-outs) and lush planting which Spaniards associate with the Moslems. Almost immediately, perhaps influenced by Gaudi, his contemporaries took up the fashion of building in brick or rubble and colored tiles as an economical method. The result was a renaissance of ceramic art all along the eastern litoral of Spain. [29] It is hardly necessary to point out the parallel to this of England's Red House and its Arts and Crafts movement.
As originally built, the Casa Vicens was extremely small, but was decorated inside with a rich eclecticism: ornate Spanish ceilings, inset panel paintings in the dining room, an oriental fumador (smoking room), and a verandah with Japanese blinds. As we see it today, minus its Japanese blinds, it is twice as large and is retracted along the street because of revisions made in 1925-26 by the architect de Serra Martinez under Gaudi's advice (plate 12). De Serra Martinez was able to incorporate Gaudi's unusual cascade arch (now disappeared) into an enlarged garden (plate 10), and he extended Gaudi's iron fence all around the site (plate 11). And de Serra Martinez has interesting things to say about Gaudi's manner of working. It seems that Gaudi built without working drawings on this occasion: the design was controlled by the 15 cm. tile, which he used as a module (Vicens was a tile manufacturer!). Seated in the lot under a parasol (there was a photograph of this), Gaudi indicated directly to the workmen how to proceed. And in that fashion for which he was later to become famous, he frequently made changes, had whole walls ripped out. We are told that Vicens, owner of a modest business, was almost ruined by the expense, but recouped later in the ceramic fad that resulted from the example of this house. [31]
During the 1880s Gaudi designed a number of other buildings of this general "orientalizing" character, although each was distinctly different. The first, a projected hunting pavilion on the coast at Garraf, southwest of Barcelona, was not executed. [32] Then in 1883 he was commissioned to build a house at Comillas as part of the group that Martorell and Domenech were constructing there for the family of the Marques. [33] Its wandering plan and playful decoration have earned it the title of "El Capricho" (plate 1, plate 13, plate 14). Set on a basement of "rusticated" stonework of varying tones, its principal story is built of tan brick banded with strips of gaily-floriated tiles, which parallel the lines of the basement. Then, based on the module of the square flower tile, there rises an intricately corbelled cornice, a series of chimneys and a cylindrical tower, all of which are harmoniously interrelated by patterns such as chevrons and prisms. The suspension of the heavy mass of the tower on top of thin colonettes was to become a favorite (and anti-classical) motif of Gaudi's.
The various works that Gaudi carried out in 1887 for the Guell family on their estate in the suburb of Las Corts in Barcelona might also be classified as orientalizing. Little remains today of this "Finca Guell," except the stables and caretaker's house on a corner of what is now Avenida de la Victoria, [34] between which is the famous dragon gate of ingeniously joined ironwork (plate 39). The plan of the two buildings is an interlocked series of rectangular, square and hexagonal elements. The stable is roofed with a row of small parabolic transverse vaults, constructed of flat Catalan tiles (see fig. 8), with clerestory lights in the vault ends. In these two edifices the tile courses of Vicens and Comillas have been abandoned, and the soft, almost adobe, brick walls are relieved by stucco surfaces, probably containing cement, into which a simple plate-like mold has been pressed (plate 40). The several cupolas, of which only a small one can be seen in our illustration, are coated with a mosaic of broken tile bits (plate 2). But most subtle is the way in which, to enliven the brick work, Gaudi introduced tiny tile fragments of contrasting colors into the mortar that separates each brick.
His fascination with Moslem art prompted Gaudi in 1887 to make one of his rare excursions out of Catalonia--to Andalusia and Tangier to study it in situ. On his return he designed two completely Moorish exposition buildings (1887-88) for the Compania Trasatlantica--that is to say for the Marques of Comillas who had taken Gaudi on the trip. Gaudi's interest in Morocco was only natural as Arab themes had been popularized in the painting of such romantics as Mariano Fortuny (of Reus!), and politically, Spain was beginning to concern itself with North Africa. The Marques of Comillas had, in fact, made the Moroccan trip for political reasons, urged by the government to establish Spanish interests there--if possible, a religious mission. Gaudi was taken along to draw up suitable plans for such an institution, which he did for the Marques in 1892-93 (plate 44). [35] He designed for the use of Franciscan missionaries a vast, several-storied building of circular plan, surrounding a court in which was to rise a large chapel with many steeples. As for its style, it appears that what Gaudi had studied of North Africa was not the lacy Moslem decor, but an indigenous tradition of turreted earthen castles constructed by certain of the Berber tribes. His quest for the Moslem had led him behind it and beyond it to new and unique forms which were to serve him later in other buildings.
Meanwhile Gaudi had been involved in a series of neo-Gothic religious commissions that led up to his appointment as official architect of the Sagrada Familia church. These included chapels and furnishings for schools in San Andres de Palomar (Barcelona) and in Tarragona, as well as a projected monastery church in the province of Almeria. In 1883, Gaudi's former associate del Villar, gave up direction of the works of the Sagrada Familia church in a dispute over policy, and Juan Martorell, who had precipitated the situation, recommended Gaudi as his successor. The circumstances that had brought about construction of this Expiatory Church of the Holy Family are of importance to us. It should be understood that it was dedicated to: (1) the Holy Family as the exemplar of the virtues of domestic life, (2) Saint Joseph as patron of the working class, and (3) the expiation of the sins of a materialistic age. It was to be financed entirely by alms, viz., by donations rather than by the regular income of the Church or State. This all came about through the efforts of a pious gentleman of Barcelona, Jose Maria Bocabella y Verdaguer (1815-92) and his priest, the Mercedarian Jose Maria Rodriguez (1817-79). Impressed by a French Marist publication dedicated to the cult of St. Joseph, [36] Bocabella founded in Barcelona in 1866 the Asociacion de Devotos de San Jose, and began publication of a version of the French magazine entitled El Propagador de la Devocion de San Jose. Together with Father Rodriguez, he achieved phenomenal success, raising a large donation for the Vatican by 1872. In 1874-75 they conceived the idea of their own church, to be a copy of the famous shrine at Loreto in Italy with a replica of the miraculous house of Nazareth in its crypt. For this, in 1881, they bought a large site in the suburb of Gracia, engaging del Villar, who was diocesan architect, in 1882. He convinced them to change to a neo-Gothic style, and ground was broken for the church on the feast day of St. Joseph in 1882. Del Villar's original plans were very conventional (fig 2a and fig. 2b), [37] but under Gaudi's management the neo-Gothic was gradually converted to an entirely unique style, and the building itself became, at times, an almost international symbol of religious quixotism (plate 19).
The significance of this edifice to nineteenth-century Barcelona, beset as it was with labor unrest and anti-clericalism, was immense, and the project seems to have become a rallying point for the religious political parties and for such conservative or centrist newspapers as El Correo Catalan, Diario de Barcelona, La Publicitat, La Vanguardia and La Veu de Catalunya, which for years reported its progress almost daily. [38] Both Bocabella and Gaudi expressed the desire that the church become the center of a colony of schools, and that craftsmen's shops be clustered about it [39]--- a romantic reconstruction of the devout Middle Ages. But apart from its moral and doctrinal implications, the building quickly became the symbol of the expansion of Barcelona as a city, of the modern metropolis over against the old medieval center. Juan Maragall voiced this when in 1905 he exclaimed, "The city shows proudly to all strangers its temple a-building; the temple ennobles the material expansion of the city; soon Barcelona will be the city of that temple, and it appears that the temple cannot exist but for that city; they are forever united." [40] When its towers were completed in the 1920s it became, in fact, Barcelona's skyscraper and figured so in many picture books. The New York Times Magazine and The illustrated London News selected it as characteristic of the New Barcelona. [41]
A good idea of Gaudi's early ecclesiastical style can be obtained from the newly-discovered project for an altar in the town of Alella near Barcelona, dated July 1883, just before he took over the Sagrada Famlia works (plate 15). Intricately neo-Gothic, it relies heavily on the effect of an inscription repeated endlessly. Such calligraphy was frequently to be a basis of his architectural ornament. Gaudi's original project for the exterior of the Sagrada Familia was very neo-Gothic, differing from del Villar's second plans only in being more complex and pointed (fig. 13). However, as we can see from his later designs (plate 22), Gaudi was to leave the Gothic Revival far behind, apparently under the influence of his own Tangier studies (plate 44). In completing the crypt, of which del Villar had left a beginning, Gaudi heightened the vaults so that it would have more light and air. He may already have sensed that the crypt would long be the only covered place for religious worship--as it remains today. Certainly he never dreamed that he would finish the whole church. "Such a work," he said, "must be the product of a long period; the longer the better ... The work of a single man remains necessarily meager and dies when scarcely born." [42] Again he remarked, "It will be the master Saint Joseph who finishes it ..." [43] The completion of the crypt and the raising of the chevet walls and pinnacles took him until about 1893. Being a fairly straightforward Gothic revivalism, this interests us little except to note that the foliated pinnacles derive from his favorite authority, Viollet-le-Duc, as do the flowering crosses that terminate many of his secular buildings. [44]
Progress on the church was, of course, hampered by the quantity of other projects in which Gaudi was concerned during the late 1880s and the 1890s. Foremost among these was the town house which he constructed for Eusebio Guell (plate 28). The Palacio Guell, as it is called, is remarkable for the quantity of activities that the architect worked into a small site, for its highly original forms, and for the extremely modern sense of flowing space. A glance at the section (plate 27) will show that the great parabolic entrance arches (plate 30) lead into a vestibule in which guests were to dismount from horses and vehicles (plate 33). Carriages were parked in the large hall behind the stairs, horses led down the spiral ramp (plate 38) to the cellar stables. Guests arrived at the main rooms (piano nobile) by a series of monumental stairways (plate 33). Here there is a large central room (with organ and side chapel) going up through several floors (plate 27) -- a grand, galleried space for which he may have been inspired by the huge open stair hall of Martorell's palace at Comillas (see note 24). Arcading, windows and wooden fretwork are used to divide the sumptuous side rooms from this hall and from each other in such a way that they do not distinctly separate (plate 34). There was a terrace garden outside as well as a number of running balconies and arcades inside that heighten this effect of continuous space. Even ceiling surfaces were made imprecise by intricate craftsmanship (plate 35), and inert stone was brought to life by applying to it a sort of proto-Art Nouveau ironwork (plate 36). As for the lighting, ingenious blinds were devised for the main rooms (plate 31), and the hall cupola was perforated with tiny windows that gave the impression of stars, by day from the natural light and at night from inset light bulbs--a modern trick. The outer shell of this cupola was the major element among the chimney pots and ventilator tops of his roof terrace (plate 32). Fortunately, heating in Catalonia is not central but 'anarchic,' and Gaudi was always provided with the constituents for constructing a whimsical landscape of chimneys among the clothes-lines of Spanish rooftops. Here as at the Finca Guell he employed his mosaics of broken tile bits. Among modernities too numerous to mention are the parabolic arches (plate 30), the mushroom columns and helical shapes (plate 37, plate 38). As American magazines observed in 1892, cost was no factor with Guell and Gaudi. [45] It seems inevitable that the owner of this palace should have later been made a count! [46]
This building, which was perhaps Venetian Gothic in origin and which Gaudi himself called "meager Viollet-le-Duc," [47] was the first of a series of his residences that might be taken together as Gothic Revival. Of these, the Episcopal Palace in Astorga (near Leon) of 1887-93 was equally ambitious; but it is difficult to reconstruct Gaudi's intentions from that which remains today (plate 41, plate 42, plate 43). In 1886, Gaudi was asked to build the palace by the new Bishop Grau, who was from Reus and knew the works of the Sagrada Familia. As he could not leave his work on the Palacio Guell at that time, Gaudi carried on a long correspondence with the Bishop about the customs and countryside of Leon, and immersed himself in books about that province in order to produce a building true to the region. In August 1887, he sent on the plans. They delighted the Bishop, but were held up for two years by those officials in Madrid who controlled ecclesiastical and public works. Gaudi went on himself in 1889 to supervise the construction, which was carried out by imported Catalan artisans. When the bishop died in 1893, the work was taken out of Gaudi's hands and entrusted to local builders who did not understand his vaulting--with resultant collapses and other disastrous consequences. The present building (plate 41) conforms in very few respects to the plans Gaudi signed (fig. 3). Gaudi was a great improviser, and the plans he was required to present to officials or patrons seldom revealed his final intentions. In this case he is said to have found Astorga so different from what he had imagined that he spent a long time after his arrival recasting the project. For instance, the lower portions and in particular the porch (plate 42) became much more powerful than in the original plans. The fact is that he grew tremendously in stature during this ill-fated commission. It is generally assumed that his religious transformation dated from his long discussions with Bishop Grau on the subjects of episcopal dignity, the hierarchy, the liturgy and architecture. [48]
While Gaudi was in the region, he was invited by some textile merchants who knew the Guells to construct a building for them on the old Plaza de San Marcelo in the city of Leon. In keeping with the venerable traditions of the city, and the great bulk of the Casa de los Guzmanes (156) nearby, Gaudi erected his plainest, sternest building which, for once, was carried out exactly as he drew it (plate 52). Called the Casa Fernandez-Andres (for the owners) or "Casa de los Botines" for a former proprietor of their firm, it is probably his most businesslike structure as well. It is a compact, rock-faced cube. Its ground floor and basement were devoted to the business, and the upper floors contained apartments of simple quadrilateral rooms grouped about six narrow light-courts (fig. 4). His usual lavishness occurs only at the main door (plate 51), and in ceilings of the proprietors' apartment (plate 53) [49]
In Barcelona, meanwhile, Gaudi had been occupied with another large building, the convent school of Santa Teresa de Jesus (1889-94). This was another instance of the association of Gaudi with the Catalan religious revival; the order of the Compania de Santa Teresa was a new one, having been founded there in 1876. Externally, their building (plate 45) is also a simple block, relieved by the presence of a crowning cornice, large flowered crosses at the corners, and an entrance pavilion which is similar to that of the Tangier mission (plate 44). The interior (plate 49, plate 50) is sparse, each brick exploited structurally to the full in order to achieve the greatest economy of materials. As can be seen from our diagrams and photographs (plate 46, plate 47, plate 48, plate 49, plate 50), the interior is built up of superimposed arcades of a steep parabolic profile that is achieved by projecting the bricks horizontally (corbelling) up to the crest where there is a short arch of radially arranged bricks. This unit is bulky but light, and it appears to have no sidewise thrusts. Its tall shape was made the motif of the external wall design, giving the whole a vaguely Moorish flavor which, with his use of brick and rubble, unites it with the houses we discussed earlier.
Any effort to divide Gaudi's highly individualized buildings into "style" groups is self-defeating because historical styles were exactly what he was growing away from in his search for personal expression. However, up to about 1900 the imprint of tradition is clear in his buildings in contrast to his output after that date. The last of what we might call his neo-Gothic designs is "Bell Esguard," a villa built in 1900-02 for the widow of Jaime Figueras high above the city on the remains of a palace that had belonged to a monarch of Catalonia's Gothic age (plate 64). The medieval aspect of this building was now an archaism for Gaudi, retained undoubtedly out of respect for the tradition of the site. [50] The tall castellated shape of the house would be attributable to the same romanticism. (Incidentally, the Catalan word for a country villa is torre, literally "tower.") Not appreciable in photographs is the fact that the roof top is a maze of stairways, galleries and lookouts from which a vast panorama of Barcelona and its port can be seen spread out below. Under the high roof is the first of Gaudi's fabulous garrets (desvanes) (plate 65). Oddly contrived vaults also appear downstairs under a plaster coating. But the most appealing feature of "Bell Esguard" is the low-keyed chromatic character of its rubble walls, produced by selecting brownish, yellowish and greenish stone of the area (plate 4). With this building, religious symbolism begins to dominate his secular commissions. Not only is there a large floral cross (again adapted from Viollet-le-duc), but in the window over the door is a green star that was to have been part of a scene of the Three Magi, and in the ironwork of the door is written, "Maria Purissima: sens pecat fou concebuda."
About 1900, Gaudi became involved in a project of urbanism. Eusebio Guell had purchased a large property on the slopes of a bare mountain behind Barcelona. Here he had the intention of creating a village development on the model of English gardens. [51] Gaudi worked on this "Park Guell," as it was called, from 1900-14, covering the hillsides (plate 66) with a series of serpentine galleries and viaducts that followed closely the irregularities of the terrain (fig. 5). Some sixty carefully-regulated building sites of triangular format were provided, but only three houses were ever built. After the death of Don Eusebio, the property passed to the city, which now maintains it as a very successful public park.
The main elements of the Park: the principal entrance with its two bizarre gate houses can be seen in the center of plate 66; two of their three turrets rise above their warped tile roofs in plate 68. The entrance stairway leads past two dripping fountains (representing a snake and a giant lizard) to the "market" hall, whose vaulted roof is supported on 100 large archaic Doric columns, the outside ones leaning inward to meet the transverse thrusts of the load (plate 67). Above, and in part carried by the market columns, is a large open Greek theater, the level "orchestra" of which is bounded by a serpentine ceramic bench and now serves as a playground (plate 3, plate 69). Through the rest of the park, more or less as in his original plan (fig. 5), Gaudi laid out several kilometers of viaduct, carried for much of its length upon inclined piers of rough stone that make up galleries (plate 70, plate 71), sometimes of two superimposed levels. At the highest point, which provides a breath-taking view of the Mediterranean, was planned at first a chapel and then a giant cross, the usual dominating accent for Gaudi's works. [52]
Gaudi's intention was to be bizarre and playful on the one hand, and on the other to produce an architecture that was a complement to Nature, rather than a contrast to it. That he was successful in his first purpose is testified to by the delight that the Surrealists have always taken in this Park. Salvador Dali recollects, "The open spaces between the artificial trees gave me a sensation of unforgettable anguish." [53] As to his second purpose, Gaudi had by now sloughed off the last vestiges of historicism in his architecture (a struggle that was not generally resolved elsewhere in Europe until considerably later). He still could play with the Doric Order in the Park and archaeologically restore the Gothic cathedral on Mallorca. However, in his serious creative moments he now had recourse to Nature. His idea was not to reconstruct natural forms exactly nor simply to stylize them anew as much Art Nouveau was doing, but to produce a type of poetic metamorphosis of them, working according to natural laws, which he considered to be the primary rules of the art of architecture. [54] Thus, without breaking with the innate properties of building materials, one could create forms parallel to, or evocative of, the beauties of Nature (that is to say, of God's architecture, which as Gaudi observed has no straight lines in it). The resultant architectural forms are not to be found in Nature, and yet they speak to us directly of it, without using intermediary literary symbols. It would seem to be such a creative process as this that causes his later works to evoke clear but indefinable natural sensations and brings Gaudi into line with much twentieth-century painting and sculpture. It is conceivable that Gaudi was influenced by the writings of Goethe on architecture and on Nature; this poet was exerting a profound effect on Catalan intellectuals, and his works were in Gaudi's library. [55] Or such a conception of architecture as a metamorphosis of Nature's forms could have been suggested by Ruskin's inspired passages about Nature and the Gothic, [56] and so have been derived directly from Gaudi's medieval interests.
Of course, one of the most startlingly "live" aspects of Gaudi's late buildings is his use of inclined supports. These he employed in order to avoid buttresses, which he called "crutches," and to put all the strength of his piers directly into the line of support. Regarding concrete, although the Guell industries manufactured a fine quality cement, Gaudi used it for little except stuccoing, as on the upper surface of the Doric columns of the Park. These columns were made of structural tiles, and were left hollow in the center to conduct into a large irrigation cistern the water that filtered through the porous soil of the playground. Supported here on the columns is a framework of reinforced concrete beams (apparently the only ones Gaudi ever used), on which were set the flat tile domes that actually carry the soil above. It is on the under surface of these domes that the famous "collages" of shattered tiles, bottles, cups, saucers, etc., were composed by Gaudi's assistant Jujol. [57]
Modernismo, [58] the Spanish Art Nouveau, developed within the Catalan Renaixenca over the turn of the century. It was stimulated by the Art Nouveau of Paris, where many Catalan intellectuals resided, and by the similar Jugendstil movement of Germany. Gaudi had already employed some of the most characteristic Art Nouveau elements, such as long curvilinear forms and freely-stylized plants, in his buildings as early as the mid 1880s--well in advance of Art Nouveau elsewhere. We have noticed this in the Palacio Guell (plate 29, plate 36), and it is particularly vivid in his furniture of this epoch (plate 100, plate 101, plate 102).
The Casa Calvet (1898-1904) is the building by Gaudi that best typifies the nascent Modernismo. [59] The facade (plate 54) is a rather conventional Barcelona one, enlivened here and there by the fluid rococo and Art Nouveau details that appeared together at this moment. The latter are most advanced in the iron derricks at the top, in the plant motifs of the owner's oriel window, and in tiny fronds amongst the iron balconies. Inside one can see from the luxuriant decoration of the elevator stairwell (plate 55) that something is stirring and that it is related to vegetation and flowing stone. Throughout this stairwell a fresh growth of nature is evident, although not as stringy as in most Art Nouveau; except for the door handles, which look like van de Velde's or Guimard's, the Casa Calvet's Modernismo is an independent local variety. [60]. Gaudi seems closest to European Art Nouveau in the furniture he designed for the ground floor offices (plate 105, plate 106, plate 107). On the whole, however, this building seems to be the most conservative of all his works, as testified to by its receiving a prize from the municipality. It was the municipality's first such building prize and Gaudi's only one; his lesser contemporaries (Domenech y Montaner, Puig y Cadafalch, Sagnier [61] were to win several each. In its day, the Casa Calvet was considered Churrigueresque (Spanish late Baroque). [62]
However, guided by his pursuit of Nature and its forms, Gaudi went directly into a more robust, structural and three-dimensional style than is characteristic of the Art Nouveau in Spain and elsewhere in Europe. His buildings can usually be distinguished at a glance from those of even his closest followers. [63] This may also have resulted because, chronologically, he developed this phase while he was planning the transept and portals of the Sagrada Familia church (1891-1903), so that his Art Nouveau is a direct outgrowth of the Gothic and the structural. The transept facade (plate 16, plate 17), except for some later figure sculpture, was carried out after his return from Astorga and seems to be, with its dripping stone effects, his first large Modernista work. His design for a sanctuary at Reus in 1900 (fig. 16) is almost too sketchy to judge, but seems to be in keeping with the Sagrada Famlia portal. Then, chronologically, would come the furniture for the Casa Calvet offices of about 1901 (plate 105, plate 106, plate 107) and the entrance houses of the Park Guell (plate 68) which were finished before 1903. The Graner chalet of 1904 (Chronol., 1904) was to have been a larger version of the Park gate houses, but a bit less spiralized and more spacious. Thus the warped surfaces which are characteristic of Gaudi's mature work appear to have been developed by him between 1900 and 1902 in the roofs of the Park houses and in the enclosure for the Miralles estate of 1901-02 (plate 72, plate 73). In the masonry of the latter, no straight line is to be found. [64] This work at the Park and at the finca Miralles prepares us then for the complete three-dimensionality of his last two secular buildings--the Casa Batllo and the Casa Mila.
The Casa Batllo (1905-07) is a good example of Gaudi's image of architecture as deified Nature (plate 76). The iridescent tiles of the facade recall the bubbly surface of a Mediterranean wave spreading over a rocky beach. The kelp-like metal work of the upper balconies and the weedy-green coping (plate 8) enhance this effect. But the balconies also appear to be masks, and relate somehow to the organic skeletal aspect of the lower facade (plate 77). Meanwhile, a succession of tiles inch their way along the crown molding, changing color as they go (plate 8), and the ever-present cross grows like some strange flower, well above it all. The vestibule and central court (plate 75, plate 79) are tiled in white and light blues, contributing further to the general marine effect. However, in marked contrast, attic and skylight (plate 80, plate 81) are very mechanical if still somewhat eerie. Of the entry (plate 82) and dining room (plate 83) of the principal level, one need remark only that the architect has avoided straight lines at all costs. This is also observable in the floor plan (plate 78) which is a work of art in itself. The rooms were scattered about with his chairs, offering themselves for the comfort of weary bodies. The form of the small chair is so appealingly sculptural that it has been presented in recent exhibitions on a pedestal, as though it were a piece of modern art.
We have come a long way since the Casa Calvet of less than a decade earlier (compare plate 54 and plate 76). Everything has loosened up, and the facade of Batllo is such an enveloping affair that it is scarcely apparent that Gaudi here has merely remodeled a front that was like Calvet's and which still retains rectangular openings for the majority of its windows. We might also compare Batllo with the adjoining face to its left in plate 76, which was designed in 1900 by Puig y Cadafalch, one of Gaudi's outstanding competitors. [65] Although designed by one of the most lavish and imaginative of his Renaixenca rivals, it remains flat, static, symmetrical and, of course, historically derivative, by comparison with the Casa Batllo. [66]
In contrast to the shimmering aqueous qualities of the Casa Batllo, the nearby Casa Mila (1905-10) on the Paseo de Gracia seems to be a man-made mountain (plate 86). Popularly known as "la Pedrera" (the quarry), its color is somber, its stone hammered and pitted. [67] It, too, has something to do with Nature; it has been likened to rocks of the Pyrenees, [68] to human lips and (in caricatures) to pastries and hornets' nests. It, too, is Mediterranean, as can be surmised from its sea-weed balconies, the grotto-like entrance courts (plate 92), and interior ceilings which resemble the patterns left in the sand by a wave (plate 93). [69] Nor is it solid rock. Gaudi, no purist, used materials to suit his purpose. Many of the jutting stones are supported by interior ironwork; some balconies are not stone at all, but are made of metal beams with glass flooring in order to allow light through to the apartment below (plate 88). And many horizontal metal beams are necessary to support the numerous piers and wall sections that stand above windows (plate 86). The pattern of these windows and supports is maddeningly random--like designs by Paul Klee--and wilfully anti-classical.
The pride of this building is its roof, a lunar landscape of erratic up and down stairways as in a dream (plate 89). It is inhabited by bizarre ventilators and chimneys, which at first seem to be sheer whimsy (plate 90, plate 91). But when it is realized that the whole building was to be the base for a gigantic statue of the Virgin de la [Paseo de la] Gracia, the demonic versus chivalric appearance of these figures is understandable. The cornice had been prepared in honor of the Virgin with the inscription, "Ave ... gratia ... plena ... Dominus ... tecum" (plate 86). When, after the destruction of religious buildings that accompanied the uprising in Barcelona in 1909, the proprietor begged off for fear that her building would be taken for a convent, Gaudi lost interest in the whole project and left it to assistants to finish. The rise and fall of the terraces of this roof is a result of the varying height of the parabolic arches of the garret (plate 94, fig. 6), which in turn arises from the fact that the garret arches must span floors of varying breadth.
Although the structure is basically a simple one (fig. 6), each floor plan is remarkably complex and different from the next. Illustrated here are two of Gaudi's original floor plans, which do not correspond at all to actuality (fig. 7a, fig. 7b), because the present partitions were installed after the building was constructed. This was done so as to ensure the maximum light and the most flowing sense of space possible. The plaster decoration of ceilings and moldings varies radically from room to room and appears to have been modeled on the spur of the moment, sometimes with the hands or fingers (plate 93). It is also interesting to note that Gaudi sold the Milas a building very much like the Casa Batllo (plate 87), but changed his plan extensively before construction started.
The Casa Batllo and the Casa Mila demonstrate that Gaudi was pursuing something more universal in Nature than the floral ornament and whiplash lines of his Modernista compatriots. Typical Art Nouveau we tend to find only in the detailing (plate 104) and in the decorations that he left to such assistants as Jujol. Gaudi had himself become increasingly absorbed in the mechanics of architecture and in its underlying geometry. He was particularly interested in the structural properties of what are called "ruled surfaces," regularly warped shapes such as hyperbolic paraboloids, that are probably most familiar to us in the sculptures of Gabo and Pevsner of the 1930s. These studies he was pursuing in connection with two religious projects, the Sagrada Familia church and the Colonia Guell chapel, in favor of which in 1910 he withdrew from almost all his other work. His reasons for the latter action need still to be explored psychologically. Taste in Catalonia was veering away from him in a typical classicistic reaction against Modernismo. [70] The big exposition of his works in Paris in 1910 (see Chronol., 1910) had received favorable comment, but it was clear that the world was not ready for Gaudi's architecture. [71] Gaudi himself insisted about his abandonment of al but religious commissions, "I have no family, nor obligations; I have left my clients, I have refused commissions; I do not wish to work for other than the Sagrada Familia, I wish nothing but it ... what I am doing is my duty, nothing more, and I must do it." [72] He did, however, continue with his work at the Cathedral of Mallorca until 1914. This was, after all, an effort to adapt the cathedral to modern liturgy, and was therefore closely related to the liturgical planning of the Sagrada Familia church (plates 25, 26). [73]
In his search for economy and efficiency in his structures, Gaudi relied on the ancient Catalan technique of tile vaulting in which the tiles are laid edge to edge and the vaults are strengthened by stiffener ribs or diaphragm arches (plate 94). [74] He carried out studies on the weights of available building stones in order to find a light, strong material for his masonry vaults. [75] What he was aiming at can be seen in the school building (plate 95) which he erected in 1909 beside the church of the Sagrada Familia using the bovedas tabicadas (board vaults) resting on beams. Here the undulating vault surface can, as seen in fig. 8, be calculated and built with ease, and a similar undulation of the vertical walls stiffens them as well. Such shapes are the last word today in egg-shell concrete structures. [76] And then there were the inclined piers which we have already discussed in connection with the Park Guell. Combined with his parabolic arches, the inclined pier brought most of his supporting masonry under compression, thus increasing its efficiency. The final step was to vault his buildings with hyperbolic paraboloid surfaces as in the latest model for the Sagrada Familia church (plate 24). Such geometrical surfaces are of great mechanical efficiency and, despite their complex appearance and long name, they can be described simply by means of straight lines and erected on forms composed of straight planks. Gaudi considered this to be a miracle of mathematics and, as we have seen (note 1), attributed holy properties to the Trinity of straight lines which determine any such surface.
The real laboratory for all these structural and geometrical speculations was the chapel at the Colonia Guell, a workers' settlement for the Guells' textile factories outside of Barcelona. Gaudi was presented with the commission in 1898, but did no more than the theoretical calculations during the first ten years. Construction began in 1908, proceeded slowly; only the crypt of the chapel was ever finished (plate 56, fig. 9). His sketches for the finished structure can be seen in plate 60, plate 61. A glance at the crypt (plate 5, plate 56, plate 57, plate 58, plate 59) will explain why the calculations evolved so slowly and the work took so long. The form and the textures are incredibly complicated in relationship to each other. To appreciate this, follow any support or shape through its several transformations--Nature and architecture are here in metamorphosis! Materials include tile fragments, rough basalt, bricks; and the grilles are forged out of scrap iron.
Mechanically, the most fascinating thing about the Colonia Guell construction is the model that Gaudi devised for his workers to follow (plate 62, plate 63). This was a scale model of a funicular diagram of the stresses. A number of funiculars (non-elastic cords suspended from both ends) were hung equal to the number of arches and ribs of the proposed building (plate 63). At appropriate points weights were hung on the funiculars corresponding to the load that the arch or rib would be required to carry at that point. The funicular curve is thus distorted into a polygonal form whose sides show the inclinations that are necessary in the arches, ribs, and piers in order for them to meet the thrusts of the loads in question. When the photograph is inverted (as we print it here), one sees a structure roughly conforming to the interior plate 61. By suspending weights from sheets instead of from cords, the properly warped surfaces were obtained (plate 62). Exacting calculation of the weights was necessary, but the complex vaults could be erected without extensive preparatory drawings. The system has application to modern concrete construction. [77] This crypt, although only a fragment of a building, is perhaps the most interesting of Gaudi's works for us today. [78]
On the other hand, the Sagrada Familia church suffers because its most exciting portions have never been carried out. Following the completion of the portal gables (about 1903), work on the towers proceeded very slowly, the masonry of the first one not being completed until 1918. The openings in these towers are shuttered for acoustical purposes; they are to have long cylindrical bells, one of which was successfully tried out in 1915. The cubistic pinnacles took about another decade to finish (plate 7), the last of the glass mosaic being applied in 1930. The interlocking geometric forms of these pinnacles are fascinating to analyze (plate 18). Conical holes were pierced through at two-thirds the height of the pinnacles in order to accommodate spot lights, to be directed down to the street in front, and in back to light up the great ciborium that was planned for the crossing. Besides acoustics and illumination, Gaudi was also concerned with color--the portals were to be painted, each in a different hue to symbolize its meaning: Faith-yellow, Hope-green, and blue for Charity. The iconography of the whole project is a study in itself--a fascinating Summa Theologica of the modern Church and the culmination of many years of research by Gaudi and his religious advisers (plates 25, 26). [79] Of the many parts which he sketched for the building, we illustrate only Gaudi's drawing for the other transept, that of the Passion designed about 1917 (plate 20). [80] Like this portal, the projected nave (plate 23, plate 24) shows many consequences of the Colonia Guell experiments--for instance, the prismatic treatment of the upper piers. The relation of these branching piers to the hyperbolic paraboloid vaults is that each carries its own vault section like an umbrella, so that the structure will approximate a series of columns with their capitals. Gaudi, before his death, toyed with the idea of vaulting the building with concrete; as can be seen from plate 23 there are to be many structural complications above the vaults themselves. He had moved far from the mechanical revival of Gothic masonry techniques which he learned in his youth. When asked as early as 1908 by a visitor, "Is this the last of the cathedrals?" Gaudi replied, "No, it is the first of a new series." [81]
Gaudi did not leave us an explicit architectural theory. He apparently never delivered a lecture nor wrote an article or book. What we have instead is a collection of dictums handed on to us by his associates, by visitors or by the press. These have been collected and published like the sayings of an oriental holy man, a great deal of literature having been devoted to their exegesis. [82] Some of his remarks are so cryptic as to have been explained variously: "Originalidad es volver al origen," has been taken to mean to return to fundamentals, to go primitive, form following function, or the return to God. Others are more complete. As an example, he spoke often of light, being concerned particularly with the angle of inclination of natural light and insisting, "Architecture is then Mediterranean, because it is harmony of light and this does not exist in the countries of the North which have an unhappy horizontal light, nor in the tropical countries where the light is vertical." He talked much of Mediterraneanism, even attributing to it the Gothic style. His great masters were the Greeks, for whom he expressed a most uncritical enthusiasm, while always belittling the Gothic as an incompletely evolved and an "industrial" architecture. He had a rather mystical belief in environment and family tradition. He ascribed his own abilities with architectural space to his descent from a long lineage of coppersmiths: "All these generations of people concerned with space give a preparation. The smith is a man who can make a volume from a flat sheet. Before he begins his task he must have visualized space." [83] The majority of Gaudi's comments are rich and thought-provoking--he was a ready conversationalist and a born teacher. As a well-educated man he was prepared to converse with visiting intellectuals on many subjects. [84] His remarks deserve translation and study, especially those that bear directly on the practice and theory of architecture.
With regard to his working methods, it should be emphasized that in spite of his improvising and his apparent rule-of-thumb methods, he was not a master mason, but an architect. His associates report that he maintained that dignity that Latins attach to the profession of architect, supervising rather than showing by example. He intervened seldom with his hands, the great exceptions being some of the iron forging and the sculpture that was designed for the Sagrada Famlia church. Considering how adept he was with abstract forms and ordinary architectural ornament, we are unprepared for the dismal figure sculpture of the Nativity facade. His first error would seem to be his quite modern belief that the architect should control every detail, which encouraged him to try to train his own sculptors. The second was his commitment to a naturalism so severe that employed life molds, death masks, dissections, photographs, and even simultaneous reflections from multiple mirrors in order to obtain exact copies of the original. [85]
But it was just this conscientiousness over each detail that accounted for his outstanding contributions to the Catalan crafts revival of his day. No medium was too lowly for him to take on. He was proud to design banners for civic processions (fig. 15). He moved freely from ceramics to stained glass to ironwork to furniture design. His furniture, as we have seen, is basic to any understanding of Gaudi's work; as with his ironwork he tried to vitalize the ordinary nineteenth-century product by injecting a brisk effect of life and nature. Fortunately, Barcelona had developed a number of first-rate shops of craftsmen who could carry out the designs of Gaudi and other Renaixenca artists.
In brief summary, Gaudi's furnishings moved from his free interpretation of the medieval which we have observed in the work for Comillas (plate 96, plate 97, plate 98 and plate 99), to the lively insect-like constructions that he employed for the Casa Batllo (plate 83), or in the Colonia Guell crypt (plate 57). This development is epitomized by the difference between the standing candelabrum designed for the Sagrada Famlia (plate 103) and a small candlestick for the Casa Batllo (plate 104). The one is a spikey medieval thing, full of motion and space, but still insistently iron. The material of the second, not identifiable with certainty, has been molded into an image of generalized organic growth. There is a madness here that Gaudi shared with a number of Modernista designers. [87] Some of this spirit he had developed independently well before Art Nouveau came along. As examples, we illustrate two pieces which are still today to be found in the Palacio Guell (plate 100, plate 101, plate 102). As he worked with crews of specialists on some buildings, there are variations to be noticed in style. For instance, most of the furniture for the Palacio Guell was done more conservatively, [88] and the suite for the owner of the Casa Calvet [89] was much less spirited than the sets that Gaudi designed for the business offices on the ground floor (plate 105, plate 106, plate 107).
Catalan craftsmanship of the period is noted for extravagance of effect, and Gaudi's was no exception. Where possible, as in the Palacio Guell, he made his walls of polished marbles or rich incrustations, but for patrons of more modest circumstances such as the Teresianas (plate 45, plate 46, plate 47, plate 48, plate 49, plate 50) he produced a polychromy with inexpensive tile and brick. The colorful tiles he designed and used were a mass-produced substitute for costly sculptured decorations on the exterior of buildings. But it is the ironwork of the exterior, like the furniture inside, that lends his buildings a sense of animation even when they are deserted. The techniques vary in his metalwork, and the range of forms is immense; his contributions to this venerable Spanish specialty have frequently been noted. [90]