Plaça Sagrada Família,
Sagrada Familia

Barcelona’s most famous symbol, and most infamous building site. A breathtaking project to realise the architectural dreams of one man; Antoni Gaudì, the city’s most exalted son. Visitors can explore the building, its towers, and the museum housed in the crypt below.

The Sagrada Família is a synthesis of the constructive and structural ideas so evident across the entire of Gaudì’s canon. Models and examples in the Temple’s museum testify to the coupling of his technical skill and imagination. He preferred the strength of pure organic forms to the artificiality of flying buttresses – which he called ‘the crutches’ – once stating, “This tree, next to my workshop, is my master”.

His exploration of structure is mind-blowing; even by today’s standards of computer generated modelling. His inverted towers, constructed of string and weighted bags, are the forerunner of today’s computer meshes with their splines and vertices; decades ahead of his time. It’s a fascinating mathematical world of hyperboloids, paraboloids and spatial structures all mixed in with an aesthetic world of form and decoration. There’s real science in those crazy towers; begin to explore it here.

contributor: Nigel Hayler