The illustrated biography of antoni gaudi architecture
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Gaudí set out to erect a building of enormous dimensions on a Latin cross ground plan with five naves.
In 1914, coinciding with the outbreak of the First World War, Güell decided to abandon the project, and in 1922, four years after his death, Barcelona City Council acquired the complex from its inheritors in order to turn it into a public park.
The park's design
The photos of Park Güell show that the two men behind the project didn't leave anything to chance.
After Del Villar’s resignation, Bocabella offered the supervision of the building work toJoan Martorell, his consultant, but the latter declined and recommended his most talented disciple: a 31 year old architect namedAntoni Gaudí.
La Sagrada Familia, Gaudí's masterpiece
Gaudí took charge of the building work in 1883 and combined the temple’s construction with his other projects, until 1914 when he decided not to take on any more commissions and to dedicate himself exclusively –up to his death in the year 1926– to the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia.
Learn how his passions, hardships, and inspirations wove into the fabric of his timeless works.
Explore His Life
About Gaudí’s Buildings
Masterpieces of Gaudí
Wander through Gaudí’s architectural wonders — from the organic forms of Casa Batlló to the soaring towers of the Sagrada Família.
This book describes in detail all the moments and secrets of a man whose pursuit of perfection was the driving force of his life.
Authors: Carlos Giordano and Nicolás Palmisano
Pages: 160
Size: 16,5 x 21 cm.
Binding: Paperback sewn binding
Cover: Flexible
Languages: Catalan, Spanish, English, French, Deutsch, Italian, Japanese, Chinese
40-001-01
New
The Basilica of the Sagrada Familia
The nineteenth century was a complicated period for Christianity in Europe, and Barcelona was a paradigm of these difficulties.
The Church, which had wielded great influence throughout the entire history of Spain, saw its authority greatly challenged due to the action of the successive liberal governments that held power in the decades following the French Revolution and the War of Independence. Whether as partners or individual members, your contribution fuels our continued exploration and education in the spirit of Gaudí.
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Park Güell
The history of Park Güell
The most up-to-date photos of Park Güell show a place full of life and movement, which attracts visitors from all around the world, but the history of this space hasn't always been so fortunate.
The 43 years that Gaudí dedicated to the construction of the Sagrada Familia enabled the architect to understand that his project was able to achieve what for centuries no other architect before him had managed to do: to construct a perfect temple.
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ABOUT GAUDI'S LIFE
Discover the Life of Antoni Gaudí
Step into the fascinating journey of Antoni Gaudí, from his childhood in Catalonia to becoming a visionary architect who shaped modernism.
In fact, the site was in reality an ambitious real estate development which was doomed to failure for the lack of potential investors, as is related in Gaudí's biography, and it was thanks to the City Council that the space could be conserved for future generations.
A development project
Located on a hillside in the north part of Barcelona, Park Güell was a commission from the influential businessman Eusebi Güell, who closely collaborated with Antoni Gaudí in order to define the different aspects of the project, declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in the year 1984.During his numerous visits to England, Eusebi Güell had heard about new urban development schemes that aimed to offer a natural and healthy environment to their inhabitants in an industrial society that was more and more overcrowded, noisy and polluted.
In the year 1899, the property developer summoned his friend and trusted architect, Antoni Gaudí, to carry out a project in Barcelona with the following features: a housing development project –Park Güell– in the midst of nature, divided into sixty plots and provided with common areas in order that its community could enjoy a certain autonomy, while at the same time founded on a solid symbolic programme aimed at promoting Christian values and Catalan traditions.
However, the strict sale conditions of the plots and the absence of a specific public transport scheme held back the urbanisation scheme practically from the very start.
In order to guarantee the desired balance and harmony between architecture and vegetation, it was decided that only a sixth of the plot’s surface area could be built on.
Classic inspiration
Just as you will discover from this book devoted to analysing Gaudí's work, the architect used to draw on the past or his clients’ hobbies when personalizing the works he planned.
Francisco del Villar was Sagrada Familia’s first architect who devised a neo-Gothic temple, in accordance with the historicist trends prevailing at the time. Using the great medieval cathedrals as one of his sources of inspiration, Gaudí proposed the reinterpretation of the Gothic style as a necessary concept for the Sagrada Familia in order to establish a close relationship between heaven and earth by means of height and light.
Unfortunately, Francesc Gaudí died a few weeks later, followed by Rosa Egea in 1912 and Güell in 1918.
Now without family and hardly any friends alive, the architect ended up moving into his study in Sagrada Familia in 1925, which meant Trias and his descendants were the only remaining residents on the site.
THE ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHY OF ANTONI GAUDÍ
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His membership in the pantheon of masters of world architecture has led to the figure of Gaudí remain associated with genius.
The architect was inspired by nature at the time of devising the complete project for the basilica, inspired by trees to create the interior's columns and incorporating animal scultures and elements from the natural world on the façades and towers. The fact that by 1878 the association already had half a million members encouraged its creator, bookseller and philanthropist Josep Maria Bocabella, to take up the construction of an expiatory temple dedicated to the Holy Family, subsidised by worshippers’ donations on a plot of land in the Eixample.
However, just one year after the start of the building work, Del Villar resigned from managing the project due to differences with Bocabella and his main consultant, historicist architect Joan Martorell.
The foundation in 1866 of the Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph was part of this reaction by the Church to recover its spiritual influence on society.
Understand how his groundbreaking designs fused nature, religion, and creativity into iconic, living monuments.
Discover His Buildings
Be a Patron of Creativity
Join us in our mission to innovate and inspire by supporting us. On the more than seventeen hectares of properties acquired on the hillside locatad in the north part of Barcelona, Gaudí and Güell designed a site enclosed by a wall and with various entrance ways, all under surveillance, the main one of which was found at the bottom of the park.
Güell's idea was that Gaudí devise all the community or common areas, along with the roads and paths that connect the different zones in the park, some of which already existed.
The developer and architect divided the remaining terrain into sixty plots of triangular shape, a configuration which meant that the maximum could be got out of the sloping land.
Amongst all these scenographic elements, the most effective one is undoubtedly the stairway that goes up from the courtyard to the market columns, the scene of some of the most popular photographs of Park Güell.
The patron and architect never commented on the significance of the symbols that were arranged around the 45 steps, an omission that for over a century has given rise to many different interpretations about their meaning, some of them endorsed by experts and then there are the more forced interpretations, product of the wild imagination with which Gaudí planned his works and the riddles created by the architect.
The houses in Park Güell
Between 1906 and 1918 three families resided in Park Güell: Eusebi Güell’s, in Casa Larrard, now the Baldiri Reixac college; Gaudí’s family, in the park’s show-home, today the House Museum; and that of the lawyer Martí Trias, who became the housing development’s sole outside client after acquiring two plots of land and building his residence on them.The show-home where Gaudí resided was built between 1903 and 1904, which was thanks to the constructors’ initiative, as Güell, the project developer, had decided not to commence building work as the failure of the property venture was becoming more and more evident.
Planned by Francesc Berenguer, Gaudí’s disciple and colleague, the house was up for sale for two years, at the same time as it carried out its function as show-home.
After several years of preparation, building work started on the 19th of March, 1882.