Gaudí and Catalan Modernisme: Buildings that Grow

Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) was a Catalan architect who created an organic language of form of his own in Barcelona within Catalan Modernisme, Catalonia’s version of Art Nouveau. His buildings have undulating surfaces, parabolic arches, trencadís of broken tile and forms taken from nature.

Facts

Barcelona and Modernisme

Barcelona grew rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century and became a wealthy industrial city. At the same time a Catalan cultural movement, the Renaixença, awoke, wanting to revive the language, history and art. Catalan architects looked for an expression of their own, and they found it in the new language of form of Art Nouveau, in which nature, craft and rich ornament were central. In Catalan it is called modernisme.

Leading names were Lluís Domènech i Montaner, who designed the Palau de la Música Catalana in 1905–1908 with coloured glass and tile, and Josep Puig i Cadafalch. But Antoni Gaudí went furthest. Read about the style’s European background in the guide to Art Nouveau in architecture, and compare Victor Horta in Brussels, whose Hôtel Tassel of 1893 is said to be the first Art Nouveau building, and Mackintosh in Glasgow.

Nature as teacher

Gaudí was born near Reus and grew up with his eyes on plants, animals and landscape. He held that nature contains no straight lines, and that the best architecture therefore imitates nature. He studied how a tree branches, how bones carry a body and how shells spiral, and used it in columns that lean like tree trunks, in vaults that resemble ribs and in roofs that resemble backs.

His technical invention was the chain model: he hung small weights on chains and obtained the form of an arch in pure compression, the catenary turned upside down. That let him build vaults and domes without needing the support of thick walls or flying buttresses. Read more about the technical principles in the guide to vaults and arches and under arches and vaults.

The works

Casa Batlló, remodelled in 1904–1906, has a façade of colourful ceramic glass, balconies like masks and a roof like a dragon’s back. On the same boulevard, Passeig de Gràcia, stands Casa Milà, called La Pedrera, the quarry, built in 1906–1912 with a façade of wavy stone surfaces, wrought-iron balconies like seaweed and a roof terrace with sculptural chimneys. Both are on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.

In Park Güell the bench in trencadís, crushed tile in a mosaic pattern, became one of Gaudí’s signatures. His early lamp post for Plaça Reial of 1879 is in the design section, and his furniture is found under the designer Gaudí. But the best-known work is the church Sagrada Família.

Sagrada Família and the legacy

Building of the Sagrada Família began in 1882, and Gaudí took over as architect the following year. He devoted his last years entirely to it and finally lived in the studio on the building site. He died in 1926 after being hit by a tram and is buried in the crypt. The church is financed by donations and admission and building is still going on. It is a blend of Gothic and natural forms, with columns that branch like trees and façades full of sculpture.

Gaudí was long overlooked by architectural history but was rediscovered after the Second World War and has become one of the most visited architect names in the world. His freedom inspired organic architecture and later designers, and many compare his way of giving buildings a body to sculpture. See also National Romanticism, another national variant of the style of the time, and the guide to Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

How to recognise it

Exercise

What is Gaudí’s mosaic of crushed tile called?