The Gaudi Architecture of Barcelona

Barcelona is an architectural hotbed of what is known as “Modernista”, part of the Catalan Modernism movement of the early 20th century. Modernista’s driving force was renowned Catalonian architect Antoni Gaudi (1852 – 1926).

Our first stop on the Gaudi tour was the Sagrada Familia, breathtaking gothic church designed by Gaudi and 142years later is still unfinished. Somewhat surprisingly, the church construction has been funded over the years solely through private donations. Some of the friends who toured the church downloaded an app and were able to enjoy an audio-supplemented tour, which in hindsight was probably the way to go. The audio tour described how the interior of the church was designed to look like trees, and the columns are made from a variety of geometric forms designed to show unique variations in the column surfaces. Gaudi also seemed to have an aversion to flat surfaces, and as a result the church interior seems to flow organically from one element to another. Added to that is a precise and selective use of colour in the stained glass that projects a rainbow of light throughout the interior. Some of the stained glass windows are so startlingly beautiful I’m thinking of asking my sister to make the pattern into a quilt. That’s a fair ask, right?

Our second Gaudi adventure took us to Parc Guell (pronounced gwell) in the north end of town. To get there we took the metro, much to Jeff’s enjoyment, as he likes to ride the public transit everywhere we go and share his wealth of knowledge about who made the train cars and how the doors operate and where the code violations are.

Much of the park is what you would expect: winding paths through trees and gardens, that I’m sure in the summer are luxuriously beautiful. In the fall, as at home, there’s not much left in the way of colourful flowers, but the walking paths are still lovely and, in November, quite quiet. It’s not until you reach the main terrace that the Gaudi influence becomes apparent. All around an open, raised terrace is a winding mosaic-inlaid bench that was described in the guidebooks as the “sinuous bench” which turns out to be apt. Just off the terrace is a colonnaded footpath that looks like something out of The Lorax. In fact, this entire area smacks of Whoville. Honestly, my money is on Doctor Suess MUST having visited this park before writing his books. I’ll just drop a few photos here and you can judge for yourself.

The third stop on our Gaudi tour was to the Casa Battlo, which translated means House of Bones. Gaudi was hired by home-owner Josep Battlo to renovate his house in a Modernista style and the building was in use as a private home until 1954 when it was acquired by an insurance company and used as office space. After that, it was used as an event space until it now seems to be open for the public to visit. For this visit, we had purchased “Gold” level tickets which gave us full access to all features of the tour including an augmented reality audioguide, the Gaudi Cube (more on this later), the Done, the Concierge room, the Private residence of the Battlos, and a priority pass. At only 10 euros more than that basic audioguide (no AR) plus Cube, this is a must-do upgrade.

The design of Casa Battlo once again seems to contain no straight lines, much like the Sagrada Familia, and again uses colour and light to draw out the inspired elements of undersea life, fauna, skeletal structures, and, on the roof, an irregular arched wall with 4 chimney stacks designed to look like a dragon. This place is bananas! The AR tour was tremendous. As you listened to the audioguide, you held a tablet up in front of the area being described and the image on the tablet would transform into whatever scene was the inspiration for that part of the house. For example, oval window panes were designed to look like turtle shells, and on the tablet, the windows transformed into turtles swimming away. Very cool! We could have stayed there for hours! In fact, we stopped on the rooftop to have a beer next to the dragon-wall.

Finally, in the basement was a smallish cube-shaped room with video screens on all sides (ALL sides – walls, floor, ceiling) and for 3 mins you are immersed in a digital art experience titled “In the mind of Gaudi”, created by Refik Anadol. Basically you stand in the Cube will thousands of images flay past and morph into meta-images of Gaudi’s various designs and inspirations. Pretty incredible.

The final leg of our Gaudi tour of Barcelona was the Hop-on Hop-off bus tour which took us past some impressive sights, but weren’t places we felt like Hopping Off for. Mostly this just impressed on us how much of Gaudi’s designs and inspirations are scattered throughout the city!