Devising parametric computer modelling techniques, adapted from the aerospace industry, Burry has been able to complete Gaudí’s designs. In fact when Mark Burry, a 23-year-old New Zealander came to Barcelona in 1980, and became involved in trying to piece the fragments of Gaudí’s remaining architectural models of the Sagrada Família together, he was unable to make sense of their unfamiliar and demanding geometry until the peseta dropped and he understood that it was in the rock formations of mountains, among other natural phenomena, that Gaudí’s exceptional mathematical imagination had been rooted.īurry went on to become both the executive architect of the Sagrada Família and a leading light in spatial design and computer programming at RMIT University, Melbourne. His ‘textbooks’ were the mountains and caves he loved to explore. Everything he designed, he said, “comes from the Great Book of Nature”. ![]() Does this resemble a dense forest of trees with sunlight shining through it? Gaudí hoped you might see it like this. Look up at the vault crowning the interior of the basilica’s nave. These are forms abstracted from nature and then translated into the design of the columns, vaults and intersecting geometric elements of the structure of the Sagrada Família. Gaudí based his designs on the complex forms we know today (or ought to know) as helicoids, hyperboloids and hyperbolic paraboloids. Scratch the surface, though, and this mind-bending building proves to be a tour-de-force of highly sophisticated mathematics and advanced structural engineering. Those who take against the Sagrada Família do so largely because they refuse to see beyond its richly decorated and apparently arbitrary forms. ![]() Without spelling it out – he rarely wrote thoughts down, and drew precious little – this is very much what Antoni Gaudí had done when he developed a form of radical architecture that, in many ways, was far ahead of its time. Intriguingly, Massip founded his own architectural studio in 1990 “with the goal to create a leading and innovative practice at the edge of architectural thinking”. Louis Sullivan, the great American architect, and “father of skyscrapers”, described it as “spirit symbolised in stone.” Walter Gropius, master of right-angled architecture and founder of the Bauhaus, praised its technical perfection. Salvador Dalí spoke of its “terrifying and edible beauty”, saying it should be kept under a glass dome. George Orwell said it was “one of the most hideous buildings in the world” and rather hoped it would be destroyed during the Spanish Civil War. Looking for all the world like a cluster of gigantic stone termites’ nest, a colossal vegetable patch, a gingerbread house baked by the wickedest witch of all or perhaps a petrified forest, this hugely ambitious church has confounded architects, critics and historians ever since its unprecedented shape became apparent soon after World War I. ![]() It will also be the strangest looking and possibly the most controversial place of worship ever built on such an epic scale. When the final stone is set in place, the Sagrada Família will be the world’s tallest church, soaring 560-ft (170-m) above the Catalan capital. Given that construction began in 1882, this is clearly the work not just of a singular and devoutly religious architect, but of several determined generations of dedicated professionals and enthusiasts. Often mistaken for Barcelona’s cathedral, the breathtaking Basilica and Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family, paid for entirely by private donations and sales of tickets to the 2.5 million people who visit it each year, is unlikely to be finished before 2026. Antoni Gaudí believed that God had all the time in the world, so there was no need to rush the completion of the Catalan architect’s most ambitious work, the Sagrada Família.
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