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Sagrada Família Expiatory Temple
Francesc de Paula del Villar i Lozano
Josep Maria Bocabella i Verdaguer founded the Spiritual Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph in 1866, at a time when the phenomenon of de-Christianisation was being driven by the Industrial Revolution and social change. From 1874 onwards, the association considered the construction of a new expiatory temple, following the trend of other religious associations that were erecting temples in Europe, such as those in Rome (Sacro Cuore de Gesù, 1870) or Paris (Basilica of the Sacred Court of Montmatre, 1873). The temple was to be a copy of the Basilica of Loreto (Marche, Italy), including a reproduction of the Holy House of Nazareth, which is where the Holy Family lived and to whom the Temple is dedicated. To build such a monumental work, the association commissioned the project from the diocesan architect Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano. The renowned architect does not agree to make a copy of an existing project and carries out a neo-Gothic style with a Latin cross project with considerable dimensions (44x97m), a large dome above the transept and a tower above the main façade, with heights of 80 and 100 metres respectively. These dimensions show us that it was not a conventional church, as the project surpassed the cathedral of Barcelona itself in terms of height, where the current subsequent dome only reaches 70 meters. On March 19, 1882, Saint Joseph's day, the patron saint of the association, work began on the crypt and at the beginning of the following year, when the walls were halfway up, discrepancies arose over the construction system. The Josephine association wanted to execute it in a more economical way, which eventually led to Villar's resignation.1882 - 1883
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Vicens House
This is Gaudí's first commission, having just finished his studies. The house consists of two floors with a low ceiling which house the main floor and the bedrooms, and a much higher attic under a multi-slope roof. The treatment of the built factory combines exposed stone and brick masonry, which is drawn and organised according to horizontal rows, and vertical elements of ceramic tile, which always draw a draftboard pattern and incorporate the corner tribunes and their elements of support. The house was conceived as a large optical device linked to the garden and the skewed views from the street.1878 - 1885
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Palau Güell
It is the Baron de Güell’s main urban residence, built on the site left by two old apartment buildings, at a peak for the city’s culture due to the imminence of the first Universal Exposition. The whole organism revolves around a large central space located on the main floor, with a height above the roof, where all the cultural and social life takes place. Gaudí creates an unusual vertical order, where the four floors above the street are expressed on the façade in six different orders, also broken horizontally. At the entrance, two inverted catenaries channel the differentiated access to the garages, the stables and the large hall. The palace is conceived as a unitary space experienced through the staircase, which ascends around the great hall until it reaches the bedrooms. Gaudí’s respect for the medieval urban palace typology is obvious, although it is full of a very sacred sense of space.1885 - 1890
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Batlló House
Gaudí is required in this case to completely transform the image of an already existing house, while freely incorporating new structural concepts, naturalistic references, all kinds of symbolism and abstract ornamentation. The addition of a new floor allows the façade to be crowned asymmetrically, taking into account the presence of the neighbouring Amatller House, which already existed at the time. The main floor incorporates naturalism in the supporting structure itself, while the attics allow the introduction of the parabolic vaults, already rehearsed previously. The collaboration of Josep Maria Jujol brings greater freedom in working with the materials and in the intensity of the effects. Both façades, front and back, undulate like two curtains. We can consider it as Gaudí's first mature work, where he achieves a surprising synthesis between the structural materiality of the building and the dreamlike nature of the multiple suggestions that we can find everywhere.1904 - 1907
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Palau de la Música Catalana
The Palau de la Música project is linked to the opening of the Via Laietana, in which Domènech i Montaner himself was strongly involved, and to the founding of the Orfeó Català, in 1891, by the composer Lluís Millet. The Palace is located on the corner of two narrow streets, and the emphasis of the whole project is to penetrate the scant natural light into every corner of the interior through numerous polychrome partitions that recreate a dreamlike atmosphere. The large auditorium is located on the first floor and is accessed via a transverse staircase that divides the entire building into two parts and encourages the use of the ground floor for administrative functions. Domènech decides to treat the façades of the two streets with the same profusion, despite their unequal hierarchy, in a demonstration of his expertise in working in unfavorable locations. The exposed brickwork, the stone worked with musical allegories and the stained glass partitions make the building shine in a special way under the daylight, which penetrates to the large auditorium. Attention to the functional aspects of the program reveals a modern Domènech who understands ornamentation as the necessary culmination of an architectural work.1904 - 1908
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Milà House
This is Gaudí’s latest civil work, in which he places full emphasis on the experimentation with the structure and opts for risky and well-differentiated solutions from traditional procedures. The load-bearing straight feet are made of limestone from Garraf, combined with metallic elements, and are dimensioned and configured according to the casuistry of their specific position. The slabs are made of metal beams, which follow an irregular order according to the configuration of the floor. The façades on the street merge with the perimeter pillars in a monolithic and self-supporting system. Gaudí proposes to detach the forms from their material content and to look for a synthesis between the abstraction and the evocation of the elements of nature. This led him to turn the building into a large monument dedicated to the Virgin, which was to crown the house as if it were just a pedestal. The help of a naval engineer or the shapes suggested on the deck reveal a Gaudí forerunner of modern architecture, interested in freeing himself from the rows of masonry, orders or the weight of building materials. The Pedrera is a completely unfinished work that solves every spatial and constructive challenge through unpublished and sometimes incomprehensible solutions.1906 - 1910
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Crypt of Güell Colony
Gaudí worked on the project for ten years, and the works did not start until 1908. It is a kind of laboratory in the middle of nature where Gaudí alternates his discoveries with the works of La Pedrera, the Sagrada Família and the Park Güell. The crypt consists of a structure of inclined pillars of basalt stone, with a monolithic shaft, prepared to support the church that was intended to be built on top. The roof is formed by a complex system of thin brick catenaries that follow a very irregular geometry, guided by numerous allusions to the animal and plant world. The first rows of the wall system, darker, are followed by reddish rows, and the church was to continue with greenish tones and finally blue, the same chromatic order of the forest that surrounds it. Gaudí worked with catenary models to trace the vaults that were to complete the whole, although the crypt is the result of working on site with all kinds of found and recycled materials, such as window bars or waste bricks. Gaudí ends up printing numerous religious and Catalan symbols on all surfaces, such as the four cardinal virtues represented in the mosaic above the entrance door.1898 - 1914
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Park Güell
The park is the result of the purchase by Barcelona City Council of the urbanisation of a luxury neighborhood designed by Gaudí and promoted by Eusebi Güell that never came to be. What can currently be visited are the landscaping of sixty undeveloped plots at the foot of Mount Pelada, with magnificent views of Barcelona, and the common parts of the project: the paths, access, market, central square. Gaudí urbanises the mountain with streets that follow the minimum sloping lines and four bridges built with material from the clearing of the plots. The retaining porch walls inside which can be circulated, covered with local stone, are exceptional. Both the bridges and the porch are crowned by unique columns crowned in turn by planters where agaves are planted. The heart of the urbanisation had to be an elevated square that instead of a perimeter railing has a corrugated bench designed and built with prefabricated concrete by his collaborator Josep Maria Jujol, finished with some breakwaters that are worth discovering in detail. Below the square is a hypostyle room that was to house the market, with twisted columns to work with as little effort as possible. The columns are empty and below them is a water tank that should cover the entire park. Some are removed in order to make room for larger stops and are replaced by medallions, also designed by Jujol. The ensemble is accessed by an imperial staircase that has, on the axis of symmetry, a spectacular dragon made of trencadís that has become one of Barcelona’s landmarks. The fence that guards the park at the entrance, finished with two asymmetrical pavilions, is equally remarkable. One of the pavilions currently houses the Gaudí Museum.1900 - 1914
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Sagrada Família Expiatory Temple
THE TEMPLE’S BEGINNINGS AND GAUDÍ’S PROJECT After the resignation of Villar, Joan Martorell, who advised the Josefina Association and was one of the most prestigious architects of the time, proposed Antoni Gaudí as a continuation of the works begun. At the time, Gaudí was a young architect, with 31 years of age, and he accepted the position of managing director on November 3, 1883. Gaudí continued the works designed by Villar and, as he gained prestige as an architect - and at the same time the confidence of the Josephine association -, he gradually transformed the initial project to the point of reaching a large, monumental temple around 1890. The new conception of the building is no longer limited to a typical Latin cross church. It increases the scale and projects a main body of five naves with a transept of three, and a monumental façade at each end, dedicated to the Nativity - east transept -, the Passion - west transept - and the Glory, located at the foot of the main nave. To join the three façades, there is a perimeter cloister, which surrounds the nave and the surrounding island, with a building on each corner dedicated to sacristies, a baptistery and a chapel of the Sacrament and Penance. The new building has a great symbolic value as a manifestation of the Christian faith - which is inseparable from art and architecture - and gains in verticality. The three façades contain four towers each, about 100 metres high, dedicated to the twelve apostles. In the centre of the transept is a large dome, consisting of six towers even taller than the previous ones, dedicated to the Virgin Mary - on the apse -, the four Evangelists - one on each corner of the transept - and the large central tower of Jesus Christ, about 170 feet. Gaudí devoted the rest of his life to the design and construction of the Temple, and exclusively from 1914, when he ceased his professional activity outside the Sagrada Família. During Gaudí’s lifetime, the crypt, the façade of the apse and much of the Nativity Façade were built.1883 - 1926
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1925 - 1927
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Continuation of Work on the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family / Sagrada Família
Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, Domènec Sugrañes Gras
After Gaudí’s death, the architect Domènec Sugrañes oversaw the direction of the works. He was Gaudí’s main collaborator at the time and he directed the works on the Façade of the Nativity - of which Gaudí had only seen a bell tower completely finished - which were completed before the outbreak of the Civil War. Mentally affected by the destruction of the Sagrada Familia workshop at the beginning of the Civil War, Sugrañes passed away in 1938.1926 - 1936
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Continuation of Work on the Sagrada Familia Expiatory Temple
Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, Francesc de Paula Quintana Vidal
After the end of the war, Francesc de Paula Quintana, who had been Gaudí’s assistant architect, and later Sugrañes, took over the position of chief architect. Once the war was over, the new Temple board focused on the restoration of the affected areas (crypt, lower part of the apse and the Nativity Facade and the schools) and the recovery of Gaudí's workshop and project, collecting photographs and plans - published before the fire in Gaudí's biographies and books on the Sagrada Família - and recovering the plaster models damaged during the war, generated by very precise geometries. The construction of the Façade of the Passion began in 1954, which Gaudí described in a very detailed elevation plan, and which he had explained to his disciples. In the transept of the Passion, Quintana he erected the double-turn column dedicated to the diocese of Barcelona, following the geometric procedure devised by Gaudí, which was the first column inside the temple and served as a model for the rest.1939 - 1966
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Continuation of Work on the Sagrada Familia Expiatory Temple
Lluís Bonet i Garí, Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, Isidre Puig Boada
The architects Isidre Puig Boada and Lluis Bonet i Garí, who had regularly visited Gaudí in the last stage of his life and had worked on the development of the work under the direction of Francesc de Paula Quintana, became the successors after the death of the latter. At this stage, the architectural part of the Façade of the Passion is completed, except for the upper porch, and a large part of the documentation and models that will allow the continuation of the works is collected and studied.1966 - 1983
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Intervention in the Roman Villa in Centcelles
La vil·la, situada al costat del poble de Constantí, és una construcció agrícola del segle II, ampliada en el segle IV. Fa uns anys un equip d’arqueòlegs almenys hi van fer uns treballs de restauració, principalment a la cúpula de mosaics que cobreix la sala central. De l’edifici només queden en peu dues sales. La nostra feina era organitzar un itinerari, avui inexistent, on s’expliqués la història i la recuperació de la vil·la. Un magatzem lateral va ser lloc d’acollida: una petita sala de projeccions i uns panells de vidre amb fotografies i textos. Un petit conducte lateral ens porta a la sala de la cúpula: un llum de peu i un petit sofà per poder mirar mig ajaguts (a la romana) i amb l’ajut d’uns petits “impertinents”, els mosaics de la cúpula. A l’última sala, la quadrilobular, s’hi exposaven peces trobades en les excavacions.1983
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Continuation of Work on the Sagrada Familia Expiatory Temple
Francesc de Paula Cardoner i Blanch, Antoni Gaudí i Cornet
Francesc de Paula Cardoner i Blanch, who had worked under the orders of Puig Boada and Bonet Garí on the construction of the Façade of the Passion, became the principal architect between 1983 and 1985. Under his direction, the construction of the windows in the sides of the naves began. In addition to construction, Cardoner devoted many years of his life to the study of the original models of the project -including previous versions of the project that Gaudí ruled out-, establishing an important classification of the pieces that have later served the generations to deepen the knowledge of the project.1983 - 1985
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Remodelling and Extension of the Palau de la Música Catalana
Carles Díaz Gómez, Oscar Tusquets Blanca
Our work consisted of rehabilitating, modernising and expanding this universal jewel of Art Nouveau architecture: the auditorium built in 1906 by Domènech i Montaner, which has not ceased to function for this purpose ever since. In the first phase, which lasted for many years, we restored heavily damaged parts of the old building and provided it with health services, accessibility, security and comfort, unthoughtable a century ago. But the most significant contribution was to take advantage of part of the site of the neighbouring unfinished church to open the courtyard as much as possible, until then always hidden and surprisingly solved by Domènech with a wealth similar to that of the main façades, and thus achieve a new access to the Palace. In the extension located next to the stage we placed services for the artists: rehearsal room, changing rooms, dressing rooms, library...1981 - 1990
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Intervention in Park Güell
Martínez Lapeña-Torres Arquitectos, José Antonio Martínez Lapeña, Elías Torres Tur
Refurbishment of the Hypostyle Hall, the square and the perimeter bench. Park Güell was a real estate operation of 60 houses for the Barcelona bourgeoisie that failed, and in 1922 the city council bought it and turned it into a public park. The park has never seen its architecture change. Since the 20s, there have only been some punctual repairs and touch-ups. The vegetation has changed and grown, and that sparse and stony image of slopes and ravines is no longer offered to the eye; immobile and permanent vegetation, pruned into stone. An architectural and abstract garden of a rocky nature; a sculpted bare mountain with stone vegetation quarry. The Hypostyle Room is a Greek-style temple with exaggerated Doric capitals and with a dented ceiling with little domes. It supports a dirt square with a wavy edging-bench; a border of acroteria of wave crests with encrusted crustaceans that bring the sea from the horizon closer to the bare mountain. Restoration works of the Hypostyle Hall and the square. Repair of structural elements in poor condition; waterproofing of the roof, and construction of an efficient drainage system; reconstruction of artificial stone coverings of column shafts, capitals and architrave; replacement of tiles on lintels, domes and perimeter bench.1984 - 1993
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Restauració de la Capçalera del Circ Romà i Adequació Museogràfica
Andrea Bruno, Jordi Casadevall i Dalmau
1987 - 1994
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Restoration of the Façade and Refurbishment of the Main Floor of Milà House
Josep Emili Hernández-Cros, Rafael Vilà Rodríguez
1988 - 1996
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Restoration and New Roof of the Crypt of Güell Colony
Albert Casals Balagué, Antoni González Moreno-Navarro, Josep Lluís González-Moreno Navarro
1999 - 2002
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Second Extension of the Palau de la Música Catalana - Petit Palau
Carles Díaz Gómez, Oscar Tusquets Blanca
Ten years after the first intervention, the total relocation of the neighbouring church was achieved, which made possible our most important contribution to the monument: to grant a new façade to the Palau, completely opening the rich side courtyard of Domènech to the new square. He dreamt of an exempt building and we, a century later, made his dream come true. Just as on the north side of the square we had erected a building for the musicians (dressing rooms, library ...), on the south side we had erected one for the public and the music school. And under the new square a room for 540 spectators equipped with new technologies that the Palau needed so much.1998 - 2004
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Sculptural Elements for the Sagrada Família Expiatory Temple
Josep Maria Subirachs i Sitjar
Among the works of art, we can highlight the Façade of the Passion’s sculptural ensemble, made by Josep Maria Subirachs and declared BCIN in the category of Historic Monument in 2019, together with the rest of his work in the Temple. In 1986, Josep Maria Subirachs i Sitjar was commissioned to create the sculptural program for the Façade of the Passion. The sculpture of Subirachs was to express the rawness of the Passion and Christ’s Death, in line with the naked and angular architecture designed by Gaudí on this façade, and in contrast to that of the Nativity. Subirachs developed the sculptural ensemble of the façade located in the porch - including the bronze doors with the Gospels - and the sculptures of the four apostles located in the bell towers up until 2005. The artist's work is completed with the seven bronze doors on the façade of the Glory -with the full text and the seven requests of the Our Father-, the Saint George inside the basilica, and Gaudí’s bust, made until 2011.1987 - 2011
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2002 - 2011
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Continuation of Work on the Sagrada Familia Expiatory Temple
Jordi Bonet i Armengol, Antoni Gaudí i Cornet
Jordi Bonet i Armengol was appointed chief architect in 1985. The work focuses on the detailed study and construction of the interior space of the temple (main nave, transept, apse and crossing), applying the defined procedures and geometries done in detail by Gaudí in the 1:10 scale plaster models. At this stage, the geometry and proportions that govern the original models are studied in detail, and 3D computer modeling is introduced for the development of the project and the production of stone pieces. In the construction field, the Catalan vault is introduced for the vaults of the central nave’s interior, following the generators of the regulated geometry, and the incorporation of Venetian glass in accordance with the symbolism. The interior of the basilica, which is dedicated to the Holy Father Benedict XVI on November 7, will be closed in 2010. In the same year, the Temple of the Sagrada Família’s nave done by Antoni Gaudí was awarded the Ciutat de Barcelona prize in the category of architecture and urbanism. Under his direction, Josep Maria Subirachs was in charge of the execution of the sculptural ensemble of the Façade of the Passion and the stained glass windows of the naves by the artist Joan Vila-Grau. Once the naves were finished, the work focused on the construction of the Sacristy, which, according to Gaudí, would become the model the towers of the central dome would follow.1985 - 2012