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Barcelona's Modernisme Architecture

January 22, 2002

Dear Friends and Family,

We are travelling to learn new things. Each stop seems to contribute its part to the list. For me, Barcelona's contribution was an introduction to 100-year-old modern architecture. The movement, called "Modernisme", was contemporary with Art Nouveau and focussed on architecture. The most prominent architect of this style was Antoni Gaudi. We visited his two most famous Barcelona works, one an as-yet-unfinished church and the other an apartment building once described as looking like a birthday cake that had been left out in the rain.

Sagrada Familia

First the church called "Sagrada Familia" (Holy Family). In 1883, Gaudi got the job of completing a church that had been started a year earlier. He was to finish it in his own distinctive style but on a reasonable schedule and within the proscribed budget. In the end, he earned an "A" for style but failed both the cost and schedule tests as the project is still undone, as you will see in the pictures. Gaudi worked almost exclusively on the project in his last years, living in a small room in the on-site workshop where he supervised the development of the three-dimensional models that served as the primary work plans. This most distinguished architect/artist left behind an almost-complete set of scale models after his untimely death in 1926. Ironically, he died after being hit by a streetcar near his project and home.

For our own visit to Sagrada Familia, we had to learn a new city's subway system. Unlike Gaudi, we did manage to survive all our encounters with public transportation, but I must say it wasn't easy. This is a pretty big city with several different subway and underground train lines and companies. But I digress, we did make it.

Once there, it's hard to know where to start. One side, called the Nativity Facade, was partially completed in Gaudi's time, but most of the place looks like the active construction site that it still is. By now, eight of the twelve bell towers have been built; the Passion Facade opposite the Nativity Facade has been completed. Work is most active on building the main part of the church, which will be topped by a main tower and four other large towers. Ultimately, another side or facade will be built, with four more bell towers and that side will serve as the main entrance. The building project may only be about half done, despite 120 years of work.

The bell towers are hollow cones with spiral staircases available around the interior, but we chose a small elevator ride instead. The view from the top of the towers of the Passion Facade was breathtaking. However, I have to admit that I was most uncomfortable in the tower that was both cramped and quite airy with openings on all sides. I was glad to get back to earth.

Next, we walked through what will some day be the main part of the church. Today, it's just a massive construction site, but many individual structural elements are in place. Gaudi designed the main pillars to be like graceful trees. They start with massive trunks and branch at the top to support the roof and ultimately the main tower and the four other large towers. Walking through the unfinished space one could only marvel at the vision that created the designs and scale models that continue to guide the builders.

As an engineer, I was interested in just how such a unique structure could have been designed over 100 years ago. It seems that Gaudi's real genius was in making highly stylized but buildable structures. He depended on plaster models and his own calculations. In a museum below the Sagrada Familia, there are examples of his detailed models, including one for an earlier project where he used small bags of sand to simulate the load of structural elements so that he could design the simplest supporting arches.

Today, we would call this type of analysis "finite element analysis" but I doubt that it would have been practical on computers before the mid to late 1960's, almost a century after Gaudi's analysis. Incidentally, there were also museum displays of modern calculations of the loads on the Sagrada Familias tree-like pillars. Those high tech calculations have confirmed that Gaudi's original designs, based on plaster models and hand calculations, were just fine. That's my idea of good engineering!

Casa Mila or La Pedrera

Probably the second most famous Gaudi building is a Barcelona apartment house built for the Mila family in the early 20th Century called Casa Mila. For most of its history, building in Barcelona had been limited to the space inside the old defensive walls. The result was a rabbit warren of narrow twisting streets, which even today is claustrophobic. In the 1800's, the city was allowed to expand to the north, but in a very ordered fashion. Streets were wide and mostly perpendicular. To let even more light reach the street, the corners of each block were cut off making the blocks eight-sided. This created four prestigious, three-sided, building lots at each intersection and, in 1908, it was on one of these lots that the Mila family commissioned Gaudi to create "an installation".

Gaudi provided a truly unique building, parts of which can be toured, although for the most part, it is still occupied. We toured at night, which limited our picture taking but gave a wonderful impression of the livability of the place. In the attic museum there are descriptions of the building and the design and construction process. Unlike most buildings of the day, Gaudi's idea was to build strictly with support columns and a network of horizontal steel beams. This allowed him to avoid supporting walls and thus allowed walls to be of any orientation or shape. He used this freedom to design a building with two curved inner courtyards and a fanciful outer stone face. (During construction, the material for this face accumulated in such confusion that the locals called the site "La Pedrera", or "the quarry", a name it keeps today.)

In the museum, we saw the original designs submitted to the city for a building approval and those plans indeed showed essentially no straight walls, interior or exterior. Actual building was only slightly less radical, as straight interior walls did get installed but in a pattern that was most unlike the perpendicular layout of then-modern Barcelona. Even the roof was filled with "sculptures" that masked the ordinary requirements of chimney flues and staircases. Walking through this rooftop garden must have been magical when the building was finished in 1913, as it was in our tour eighty-some years later.

Inside, one of three apartments on the fifth floor has been restored to appear as it might have been in the early 1920's. It was a large place with several bedrooms, an office or two, large living and dining rooms and a library. The kitchen and baths had running water, including hot water for showers and baths. In the original scheme, there were even garages down curved ramps into the basement and all apartments had elevator access, so the prime apartments became those on the top instead of those on the lower floors. As we wandered through, we got a picture of the good old days in Barcelona.

There is a great deal of interesting architecture in Barcelona besides Gaudi's two most famous Modernisme works. In the narrow confines of the Old City are the old buildings that give off a wonderful sense of history. Out in the newer parts are block after block of grand 100-year-old buildings covered with Art Nouveau decoration in stone and iron. In these areas, and in even more modern areas, spectacular entrances seem the norm, with the buildings competing with each other in the opulence of the entrances into inner courtyards and, often, ornate elevators. (Our apartment building in Kyiv is contemporary with many of the fine Barcelona structures and now we can see how our own entry might have been.)

Now I must get on with more Barcelona stories and more from Spain beyond that.

Take care of yourselves and your buildings - they may someday tell a tale.

John and Marianne

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Created February 4, 2002

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