Homage to Catalunya: Architecture of Barcelona

This is Part Four of a seven-part series on Catalonia, following this plan:

1. Introduction & Background
2. The City of Barcelona
3. Museums of Barcelona
4. Architecture of Barcelona
5. The Museum of Dalí
6. Montserrat
7. Tarragona

---

Few cities can compare with Barcelona for the variety and depth of architectural pleasure on display. In my posts I have already had occasion to mention some of Barcelona’s wonderful gothic buildings, such as its cathedral and its basilicas. Even quite functional buildings are intriguing, such as the Fundació Miró, the Palau Nacional, as well as Barcelona’s former bullring, Las Arenas, and even its latest one, Monumental. Indeed, Barcelona is so full of fine buildings that many are barely noticed by the tourists. As an example of this I would offer the Casa Comalat, a bulging apartment building designed by Salvador Valeri i Pupurull, whose form would be eye-catching if it weren’t in the same city as Gaudi’s works.

Though Barcelona dates back to Roman times, its most fertile architecture period occured at the turn of the 20th century. This was the epoch of Modernisme, the Catalan version of Art Nouveau. The most overpowering quality of this trend was its emphasis on ostentatious decoration. There is nothing light or understated; the architecture bursts forth like a flower into curves and colors. Modernisme also coincided with a resurchange of Catalan nationalism, and as a result many buildings from this fruitful period are explicitly or implicitly involved in the Catalan identity. This movement had many excellent practitioners; but two architects stand out above the rest: Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Antoni Gaudí.

Lluís Domènech i Montaner

I cannot say why Lluis Domènech i Montaner (1850 – 1923), an architect nearly as original as Gaudí, is not even one-tenth as well-known. Certainly he was a less Byronic figure. Far from the typical brooding, solitary genius, Domènech was a man of the world. A brilliant polymath, he was a writer, scholar, teacher, and politician in addition to his work as an architect. But his central concern, in all of these endeavors, was to create a Catalan nationalism that was forward-looking and unprovincial—a Catalan nationalism that celebrated the region without rejecting the rest of the world.

One of his best-known buildings stands in the Parc de la Ciutadella (discussed in a previous post), beyond the Arc de Triomf. It is the Castell dels Tres Dragons, which was made for the same 1888 World’s Fair as the arc and the park’s fountain. Originally it was meant to be the Café-Restaurant adjoining a nearby hotel, which Domènech also designed but which was subsequently torn down. Nowadays the fortress is home to the zoological museum. It is notable for its use of brick as a decorative material—looked down upon at the time, though Domènech liked it because it contained Catalan soil—as well as nakedly visible cast-iron supports.

Far more showy is Domènech’s Palau de la Música Catalana (Palace of Catalan Music). This is a concert hall built between 1905-8 for the Orfeó choral society. Though unfortunately I have not yet gone inside—one of my biggest regrets of my visits to Barcelona—Robert Hughes considered this building to be Domènech’s masterpiece, and I have no reason to doubt him.

The concert hall stands amid the cramped streets of the old city center, hemmed in closely on all sides; so it is difficult to get a good look at its impressive façade. Nevertheless you can certainly appreciate the sculptural group exploding from its front corner, bursting forth like the prow of a ship. This is an allegorical representation of Catalan folk song, designed by Miguel Blay. Sitting on columns, high up above, are the busts of Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner. (According to Hughes, Wagner was deeply loved in Catalonia at this time, since his own project of creating nationalistic art by combining different mediums—Gesamtkunstwerk—was obviously parallel to Domènech’s own aims, as well as those of his compatriots.) Colored mosaic enliven the building’s flaming brick-red exterior, giving the whole a playful, festive air.

Judging from the photos, and from Robert Hughes’s descriptions, the inside is even more impressive than the exterior. The roof of the concert hall is dominated by a glowing stained-glass skylight that droops down into the space. On either side of the stage are elaborate sculptural friezes. On the right, Beethoven’s bust swells into the smoke of inspiration, which then bursts forth into flying valkyries. Opposite Beethoven is the Catalan poet Josep Anselm Clavé, whose thoughts spring into a tree that blooms across from the winged warriors. Curiously, for a performance space, the concert hall is extremely open—both sides dominated by large windows. This means that, ironically enough, the acoustics are not great; and also that the space is poorly insulated from street noise. This hasn’t stopped many famous performers from adoring the space, including the famous Catalan cellist, Pau Casals (whose recordings of Bach’s cello suites, the first ever recorded, are still my favorite).

The building I have visited is Domènech’s Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Hospital of the Holy Cross and Saint Paul), begun in 1905 and not completed until 1930, after Domènech’s death, by his son Pere Domènech i Roura. This building complex is listed—along with the Palau de la Música Catalana—as one of Spain’s many UNESCO World Heritage sites, and deservedly so.

The Hospital de Sant Pau replaced Barcelona’s far older and obsolescent Hospital of the Holy Cross, a gothic structure that had been in use since the middle ages. This hospital was overcrowded and wholly unsuited to the new technologies and techniques of modern medicine. Luckily, a hefty donation from Pau Gil, a wealthy banker, allowed the city to begin work on a replacement. (This is why the new hospital is named Sant Pau, to honor Pau Gil’s contribution.) The new hospital was to be situated in the recently constructed Eixample, away from the overcrowded old city, almost next to Gaudí’s Sagrada Família (which begun construction about twenty years earlier). You can still see some of the buildings that formed the old gothic hospital, by the way, since they have been refurbished—most notably as the Library of Catalonia.

The hospital that Domènech designed could not be further removed than the dreary gothic interior of its predecessor. Indeed, it is unlike any hospital I have ever seen or heard of. Far from the white, sterile, and crowded places I know as hospitals, Domènech designed a place open, colorful, and tranquil—a place of pleasure and peace. For me his design is so convincing that I wonder why every hospital does not emulate it. For if healing is not just a matter of treatment and cures, but of will and mindset—as I think is the case—then Domènech’s work is a model: catering to the mind as well as the body.

The entrance to the hospital is a sweeping, winged building that seems to embrace the visitor as she walks inside (see photo above). It is crowned by a magnificent clock tower and adorned with angels. These angels were designed by the neoclassical sculptor Eusebi Arnau and his more famous pupil, Pau Gargallo (who has a museum dedicated to him in Zaragoza), whose own angels reveal the growing influence of cubism in his work. Running across the outside of this central structure is a mosaic showing scenes from the development of medicine in Catalonia, ending with the creation of the hospital itself.

Once the visitor walks through this main building, she will find herself surrounded by several separate pavilions, arranged in two neat rows with their entrances facing one another. Domènech wanted a place open and green; and to do that he split up the hospital into these individual buildings, leaving a garden in the center. This decision had medical as well as aesthetic motives; for it allowed patients with different ailments to be separated and quarantined from each other, reducing infection and improving organization.

The central garden is filled with benches, where patients could sit and rest. But of course the entire effect would be spoiled if doctors, nurses, and orderlies were constantly rushing in-between the pavilions and through the gardens. To prevent this, Domènech built a network of tunnels under the hospital, which directly connect each structure in the compound.

Each one of the pavilions is a delight, with a glowing, multicolored dome crowning one side of its entrance, and a narrow circular tower on the other. This fairly narrow façade conceals the buildings’ lengths, their main bulk leading away from the central courtyard. Each of their slanting roofs is decorated with bright tiles in delightful swirling patterns, different for each building. The insides are equally inviting. A vaulted nave leads down to the back of the building, its walls and ceiling covered in shining tiles, making the visitor feel that she is walking inside a luminescent seashell. Windows run along the top of each side, providing enough natural light to render artificial lighting unnecessary during the day. Beside the entrance, beneath the frontal dome, is the sun room, whose large windows flood the space with light. This room was used for relaxation and also for receiving visitors.

The Hospital de Sant Pau stopped receiving patients in 2009, when a new hospital was opened up nearby. Nowadays it survives as a museum and a monument. Judging from the informational video on display in the building complex, the hospital which replaced it is yet another modern care center—devoid of color and empty of air. This is a shame, I think, for Domènech’s building has much to teach us that we have yet to learn. Indeed, the Hospital de Sant Pau teaches the lessons of all great architecture: that beauty can be functional; that daily life need not be drab; that art and science can be merged. The building complex is not just a work of art, but a vision of what a cultured society can be: catering to and caring for the whole human being—not just the body’s obvious physical necessities but the mind’s subtler needs.

From the front steps of the administration building, the visitor can see the masterpiece of Barcelona’s next great architect—the Sagrada Família—whose work, albeit differently, illustrates the same lessons as Domènech’s.

---

Antoni Gaudí

The life of Antoni Gaudí (1852 – 1926) fits our Romantic mold of the eccentric artist far better than does Domènech’s. Neither a man of the world nor a public intellectual, but an austere man of deep spiritual convictions, Gaudí was every inch an artist. Uncompromising in his style, he accepted no projects unless he was given a free hand—complete creative control. Unyielding in his religion, he stood against the secularizing and cosmopolitan currents of his day. Fully obsessed with his work, he lived a monkish life, never marrying or even having any significant partners. He was killed by a tram on daily walk to confession—too deaf, apparently, to hear the oncoming train or the shouted warnings of bystanders. He was 73. His appearance was so shabby, and his pockets so empty, that he was originally mistaken as a beggar and sent to a public hospital to receive basic care. When his identity was finally ascertained it was too late to save him.

Gaudí came from a long line of artisans. At a young age he observed his father bending and molding metal into shapes. His profound understanding of structure and form, therefore, was anything but mathematical; he did not like drawings and hardly made any. He performed poorly in school. He thought with his hands, and thus preferred making models. Nowadays we have computers to aide architects in the difficult problems of support and weight distribution. Lacking (but not missing) these resources, Gaudí invented his own solutions. His most memorable one was to suspend little bags of birdshot from strings, showing how the weight naturally fell. When he photographed these models, and then turned the pictures over, he had perfectly sound structure. Unfortunately for history, many of his models for the Sagrada Família were destroyed in 1936, during the outburst of anti-clerical violence that followed the onset of the Spanish Civil War. Thus much of the work done on that building is little more than a guess at his intentions.

Perhaps the most perplexing thing about Gaudí, at least for us in the modern world, is his simultaneously radical style and ultra-conservative worldview. This is only a paradox if you blandly assume that avant-garde art comes with a left-wing perspective. Very often this is the case, of course, especially in the past one hundred years. But not necessarily. Now, Gaudí’s radicalism had many components. Most obviously it was religious. Gaudí was living in a time of growing secularism; anti-clericalism was a strong cultural force in Spain, occasionally leading to outbreaks of violence and destruction of church property. The famed Poblet Monastery of Gaudí’s native Tarragona, for example, was burned to the ground in the 1830s in one such outbreak. Gaudí thought that the only proper response to this was unconditional submission to the church and extreme acts of penance. He himself fasted intensely, sometimes endangering his health.

Gaudí was also an intense regionalist. He thought that Catalonia was ideally situated between the passionate south and the over-intellectual north. To this religious regionalism one must add his love of nature. The movement of Modernisme itself emphasized natural forms, particularly the colors and curves of flowers. But Gaudí took this love of nature to an extreme. In his works, for example, one can find scarcely a single straight line—since perfectly straight lines are rarely seen in natural objects. To make some of the decorative friezes on the Sagrada Família, Gaudí made casts of plants and dead animals, even asking nuns for stillborn babies to use for the little angels (and the nuns agreed). To make the crucifix for the Sagrada Família’s main altar, he had a workman tied to a cross in order to see how a body naturally hangs from such a pose (the body droops down far more than in conventional representation). In short, Gaudí saw nature as God’s creation and strove to incorporate its order into his works.

The majority of Gaudí’s works are found in Barcelona. I have only managed to visit three, but these were enough to fill me with awe and to give me enough imaginative food for a lifetime.

The first was the Casa Batlló. This building is located on the Passeig de Gracia, in the famous Illa de la Discòrdia (Isle of Discord), a block so-called because it is home to four famous houses by four architects with jarringly different styles. One of these was by designed by the aforementioned Domènech: the Casa Lleó Morera. Next door is the Casa Ramon Mulleras, by Enric Sagier, the architect who designed the expiatory temple atop Tibidabo. But the most attractive house, after Gaudí’s, is the Casa Amattler by Josep Puig y Cadafalch. Topped with a Dutch-style crow-stepped gabble, the house brims with color and charm—very appropriate for the home of a chocolatier, which it was. Barcelona has no lack of brilliant architects.

Yet even such showy houses look absolutely tame next to Gaudí’s construction. This home was built (actually renovated, from 1904-1906), like all the other fine apartments on the block, at the behest of a rich patron—in this case, Josep Batlló i Casanovas. Seen from the outside the building has three distinct levels. The lowest consists of the cavernous windows covering the first floor, with spindly stalactites for supports. The windows above are discontinuous; and each is fronted with a skeletal, even skull-like railing. The roof bursts from the building’s body like the frilled back of some tremendous reptile. Indeed, this is the most popular interpretation of the building’s form: that the apartment is meant to be the dragon vanquished by St. George—the bottom layer its cave, the windows its victims’ skulls, the top its back, and the turret on the left St. George’s deadly spear. This interpretation ties into both Gaudí’s religiosity and his regional pride, since St. George is Catalonia’s patron saint.

The inside of the building is just as spectacular. In the dining room, which overlooks the Passeig de Gracia through the cave-like window, the ceiling swirls like a hurricane, its undulations closing in on the central light—molded to look like a glowing iron sun. Above the windows and doors circular panels of stained glass shed colored light throughout the space. Every surface swells and shifts like a windswept pond. On the far side of the room is the fireplace seat—two seats situated in a mushroom-shaped nook around the fireplace.

The central lightwell is one of the most impressive sights. Each surface is covered in shiny blue tiles, darker near the light source at the top and brighter near the bottom in order to equalize the brightness. Ascending upwards the visitor reaches the loft, where white catenary arches (similar to parabolic arches) enclose a narrow passageway (supposedly representing the dragon’s ribcage). On the roof one can see Gaudí’s whimsically bent chimneys, covered in colored tiles, as well as his trademark blooming cross, whose flower-like shape allows it to appear cruciform from any angle. Like so many of Gaudí’s buildings, the whole thing has an Alice-in-Wonderland quality.

Undeniably, one of the Casa Batlló’s finest features are the tilework that adorns the surface, making them shimmer with color like a Monet painting. This technique is called trencadís, and is done by plastering together smashed up china. The credit for this fine work actually belongs, not to Gaudí himself, but to Josep Maria Jujol, who also collaborated with Gaudí to create the fantastic mosaics in our next site: the Park Güell (1900 – 1914).

 

 

The park takes its name from Eusebi Güell, a wealthy entrepreneur who became one of Gaudí’s greatest patrons. The original idea was not to create a simply a park but a garden housing development, following the English garden city movement initiated by Sir Ebenezer Howard (which is why its real name is the English word “Park”). The goal was to create a green neighborhood for the wealthy who wanted to escape Barcelona’s insalubrious city air. But the idea was a flop, since nobody wanted to move so far away from the center; indeed, most people with money preferred to build fancy apartments on the Passeig de Gracia, such as the Casa Batlló. In the end only two houses were sold, one to Gaudí himself, where he lived from 1906 until his death in 1926, and which is now the Gaudi House Museum.

Describing the whole park would be an exercise in futility, but there are some highlights that cannot be missed. The first is the statue (in Jujol’s brilliant trencadís) of a salamander, nicknamed the dragon, which seems to guard the water in the fountain below. This is found on the staircase leading up to a forest of columns—the “hypostyle room”—modelled after a Greek temple, whose pillars hold up the terrace above. This terrance is one of the most famous spots in Barcelona, partly for its view of the city, but also for its undulating, ceramic bench that slithers around the exterior. Below, one can see the two pavilions that flank the original entrance, with rough brown walls and black and white roofs, one of them sporting a large tower topped with Gaudí’s signature budding crucifix.

The park itself is full of structures dun-colored stone—walls holding up terraces, elevated roadways and viaducts, balconies and covered footpaths proceeding through columns. The aesthetic effect produced by all this stonework is unique—for me at least—being somehow both natural and unnatural, which was undoubtedly intended by Gaudí.

If you leave the park and head towards the shore, you will replicate a journey taken by Gaudí himself many times during his life, ending up with his greatest and most iconic work of all: the Sagrada Família.

The full name of this building is the Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, which translates to the Basilica and Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family. To repeat an earlier post, it is not and never has been a cathedral. By the time construction on the Sagrada Família began, in 1882, Barcelona had possessed a cathedral for several hundreds years already and was in no need of a replacement. Indeed, it is only recently, in 2010, that the building was designated a basilica (which essentially means it is an especially grand church). Before this consecration it could not even be used for mass.

The history of the building is an epic in itself. Never an official church project, the idea was conceived by an independent religious organization and funded by private donations. Gaudí used himself to go visit wealthy families on the Passeig de Gracia, asking for “a sacrifice.” Even today the building’s continuing construction is funded by entrance fees. Construction began in 1882; and by the time Gaudí died, in 1926, not even a quarter had been built. Since his models were destroyed during the Civil War, we cannot even be sure if the final result will be true to his vision. The builders hope to have the main towers completed by 2026 for the anniversary of Gaudí’s death—but these things are hard to plan.

The building has grown from its controversial origins—many feared that it would outshine Barcelona’s cathedral, and arguably it has—into being the inescapable symbol of Barcelona, as thoroughly identified with the city as the Eiffel Tower is with Paris or the Empire State Building is with New York. Indeed, the Sagrada Familia is the most visited monument in all of Spain—surpassing even the Alhambra in its more than 3 million visitors per year. Even so, not everyone likes it. George Orwell infamously remarked that the anarchists showed poor taste in not blowing it up; and Gerald Brenan cited the building as evidence of Catalonia’s low cultural level. I admit that when I first saw it I was put off by the hugely exaggerated goliath that greeted my eyes. The bulging form struck me as garishly Disneyesque, all cheap flare with little thought.

But I was badly mistaken. For close inspection cannot but reveal the Sagrada Família to be one of the great edifices of the world. Like all of Gaudí’s work, the Sagrada Família does not conform to any particular style. But if forced to put a label on it, you might call it a mixture of neo-gothic and Modernisme—though it goes far beyond the bounds of both.

As you approach you can see the basilica’s famous towers that curve up like rockets waiting for takeoff. Its dusty brown color gives it an earthy appearance, almost like a giant sandcastle, which belies its bizarre and otherworldly form. The continuing construction is evident. The newer sections are visibly more mathematically precise and their material is fresh and clean, unstained by the years. And if that wasn’t enough, the towering cranes overhead let you know immediately that the building is still very much a work in progress.

The visitor enters through the Nativity Façade, the only one completed during Gaudí’s life. It was for this façade that Gaudí made all those casts of plants, animals, and babies—to emphasize the divinity in nature and the nature of divinity. The holy family stands on the central doorjamb, surrounded by smiling angels and onlookers, heralded by four musicians who celebrate the coming of the Lord. These figure are suspended in a quasi-natural space, much like that of the Park Güell, the rough and bulging stone looking like a cave or a cliffside. Animals can be seen, too, such as the two turtles—one aquatic and the other terrestrial, representing the stability of the sea and the land—as well as plants, such as the palm leaves that grow out of the two pillars. Crowning the whole façade is what looks like a Christmas tree: the tree of life. You might even be tempted to call such nature-worship “pagan,” if it weren’t tinged with such a strong dose of repentance.

Impressive as all this was, I was prepared for it. Like nearly everyone I had seen photos of the Sagrada Família beforehand and so knew roughly what it looks like. But I was not prepared for what awaited me inside.

Gaudí has created a space utterly unlike any I have ever seen. The effect was so strange that I felt as though I had been transported onto another planet or was exploring an alien temple. Several factors combine to produce this effect. Most obvious is the lighting. Radiantly colorful light pours in through the exquisite stained glass. There are lighted panels on the columns, too, as well as on the roof, and so color comes from every direction. The columns are designed to maximize this effect. They subtly change in shape throughout their lengths, going from eight-sided to circular to six-sided, and so on, which affects how the light hits their surface. Gaudí’s columns are special in another way. They do not sit perpendicular to the ground, but at a slight angle; and as they approach the ceiling these columns branch off like the trunks of trees. The visitor feels that she is walking through a petrified forest illuminated by the light of distant suns.

I found the interior of the building so stunning that, when I exited on the other side, I was somewhat exhausted. What greeted me here was the Passion Façade. This side was expressly conceived by Gaudí to contrast with the Nativity Façade. Where that side of the building bursts with curves and figures and thus brims with life, the façade dedicated to the Passion is bare, linear, and austere—a monument to death. The sculptures depicting the crucifixion were designed by Josep Maria Subirachs, who also designed the monument to Francesc Macià (discussed in a previous post). The harsh and almost cubist sculptures that Subirachs designed have proven somewhat divisive. Some, like Robert Hughes, think that the sculptures are not consonant with Gaudí’s aesthetic. Others were offended for religious reasons, since this façade has one of the few extant representations of Christ completely nude. In any case I liked the heavy, blocky statues, since they provided a nice contrast with the previous side. They are also, arguably, not very distant from Gaudí’s own work, since they are highly reminiscent of the sculptures atop another of Gaudí’s famous works, the Casa Milà (which I have yet to visit).

---

This exhausts my experience and knowledge of Gaudí’s work in Barcelona. Indeed, with this post I come to the limit of my knowledge of Barcelona. Yet despite my tour of Barcelona’s museums and architecture, one iconic Catalan artist has yet to be discussed: Salvador Dalí.