The Shadow of the Wind
Sep. 19th, 2020 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: The Sagrada Família - Gaudí's Heaven on Earth, by Gijs van Hensbergen
I picked this up in a work book sale a few years ago, mostly with the thought that it might be of interest to R, but also for myself. We took a holiday in Barcelona in 2003, and visited several Gaudí projects, including the as-yet unfinished Expiatory Temple. Gaudí's work seemed quite peculiar to me: at once "modernist" yet also organic, eschewing regular geometry in favour of curved surfaces in buildings such as La Pedrera and those at Parc Güell. The geometry of the Sagrada Família strikes a more conventional modernist tone; I did find the light inside quite unusual, even though we were walking largely around a building site.
Van Hensbergen's book is part biography of Gaudí, part history of the building of the church (at the time of the book's writing, expected completion was 2026; now likely delayed further due to Covid-19). If it seems odd that the work has been going on for more than a century, one should remember that this is not unusual of religious buildings throughout the ages; the prevailing Catalan and Spanish attitudes to the Catholic religion have also played significant roles in the stop-start nature of the building works during the twentieth century. I had not realised (or remembered) that Gaudí inherited the project from another architect, nor that many of his models were destroyed (unsurprisingly) during the Spanish Civil War. Being a project of private subscription has perhaps allowed it greater continuity, as well as greater longevity, than a municipal project would have had. The book is never heavy reading, but it does more than scratch the surface.
I picked this up in a work book sale a few years ago, mostly with the thought that it might be of interest to R, but also for myself. We took a holiday in Barcelona in 2003, and visited several Gaudí projects, including the as-yet unfinished Expiatory Temple. Gaudí's work seemed quite peculiar to me: at once "modernist" yet also organic, eschewing regular geometry in favour of curved surfaces in buildings such as La Pedrera and those at Parc Güell. The geometry of the Sagrada Família strikes a more conventional modernist tone; I did find the light inside quite unusual, even though we were walking largely around a building site.
Van Hensbergen's book is part biography of Gaudí, part history of the building of the church (at the time of the book's writing, expected completion was 2026; now likely delayed further due to Covid-19). If it seems odd that the work has been going on for more than a century, one should remember that this is not unusual of religious buildings throughout the ages; the prevailing Catalan and Spanish attitudes to the Catholic religion have also played significant roles in the stop-start nature of the building works during the twentieth century. I had not realised (or remembered) that Gaudí inherited the project from another architect, nor that many of his models were destroyed (unsurprisingly) during the Spanish Civil War. Being a project of private subscription has perhaps allowed it greater continuity, as well as greater longevity, than a municipal project would have had. The book is never heavy reading, but it does more than scratch the surface.
