[architecture ebook] - Biografia 01 - Antonio Gaudi.pdf - architektura - rzw25

ANTONIO GAUDÍ

June 25, 1852, Reus (near Barcelona) - June 10, 1926, Barcelona

Part One

19 th CENTURY GOTHIC REVIVAL AND ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Western architectural history might be represented as a continuous competition between the

Classical and Gothic paradigms : After Classical Greek and Roman architecture,

Romanesque period represented a transition to Gothic. Thereafter Gothic was a complete

opposition to the Classical. Renaissance on the other hand opposed and suppressed the

Gothic paradigm altogether. After neo-classicism in Romanticism, however, the Gothic

paradigm got the upper hand again. After the Gothic revival in many countries there was a

pluralism of styles called Historicism in which often the Classical dominated again. L’art

nouveau often represented the return of the spirit of Gothic revival, while proto-modern

classicism was its total abandonment. In certain ways the following modernism and

postmodernism also may be read as a competition of the two aforementioned paradigms.

The Classical paradigm was based on strictly codified order, proportions and symmetry. The

Gothic paradigm was more organic and picturesque, often disregarding symmetry. The

classical paradigm brought ready-made concepts to a certain location, while the Gothic

followed organically the topography and existing buildings. It is important to stress that these

methods are not only formal issues, but reflections of philosophy too: rational versus

emotional, mystical. The classical paradigm presupposes that the universe underlies a basic

order (usually conceived and represented as geometry), which man can chart. The Gothic

paradigm is more agnostic in this respect: man can learn only what God reveals for him;

consequently the only source is belief. The universe is not a geometrically co-ordinated

organism but a scene of miracles. The building, the cathedral still remains a mirror of the

universe, but not a strictly and geometrically co-ordinated one. It is more a vision. (See my

lecture in the theoretical course Architectural Theory of the Middle Ages, part on Neo-

Platonism and Early Christian Philosophy versus architecture.)

This idea is reinforced by some ideas of a recently published book: Charles Jencks’s Ecstatic

Architecture. The famous architectural historian speaks about Gaudí as an offspring of

ecstatic architectural heritage, i.e. the one that stems from rapture, frenzy — in Gaudí’s case

the religious one and not the sexual. Jencks sees in Gaudí’s expressionism the main features

of ecstatic architecture: “getting out of the body of the house” with the undulating lines, the

involvement of non-architectural motives into the buildings (see description of Casa Battló).

Curiously, Jencks relates his concept of ecstatic architecture mainly to Baroque and Art

Nouveau and not that much to Gothic, to which Gaudí belongs the most.

According to my reading, Antonio Gaudí belonged to the Gothic line both in the formal and

in the spiritual sense.

Historically the roots of Neo-Gothic style go back to the literature and literary criticism of 18th

century England. Critics after studying William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Edmund

Spencer (1552-1599) realised that these writers are more vivid and pleasant in the details than

the cold and noble-minded clasicising works following the Aristotelian aesthetics.

The idea was at hand: if dethronement of the classical aesthetics is possible in literature, why

not in architecture? Nevertheless, no architect dared to realise this idea at that time. Horace

Walpole (1717-1797), the writer of the first “Gothic” romance of chivalry, decided to spend

his life in the environment of his heroes. He founded a committee for collecting the motifs

and details of medieval architecture and let them implement in his Strawbery Hill , the first

Romantic Castle. This edifice caused a wave of castle, monastery and ruin imitations in

England, without a proper understanding of Gothic architecture. Neo-Gothic became soon a

caprice of gentry, like the breading of extravagant dogs, for instance. It gained on significance

when the Anglican Church appeared among the clients for neo-Gothic, lead by the idea that

this style properly expresses Christian values referring to the “Christian period.”

As the neo-Gothic referred to the Middle Ages, numerous countries took it as an epitome of

the glorious period of their national history. Curiously the neo-Gothic became a kind of

national style for almost all nations of Europe, including the small ethnic groups like the

Catalans, fighting for political independence. In England, for the Houses of the Parliament the

Gothic style was prescribed already in the competition.

A profound ideologically coloured architectural movement followed the former blind

imitation of Gothic details seen in the Strawberry Hill.

Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-1852) was the first who attacked the cheep pseudo-Gothic

architecture, pleading for a proper understanding of the medieval spirit. He maintained that if

a building is sincere, reflecting the real nature of materials and function, it must be beautiful.

Pugin’s ideas re-emerged in John Ruskin ’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture.

Ruskin pointed out that mood and moral feelings are the magic forces that create ‘good

architecture’. Furthermore, he stated that architecture possesses moral values independently

from the esthetical ones. According to him, the moral values are more important than

aesthetics.

Now, the question is what is this “moral base” of architecture? Is that simply sincerity,

displaying the nature and quality of materials and structures? Is it more? Can technology

overcome itself and become a moral issue?

I think hardly. What is tachles remains tachles, there is no way-out. My view is based on the

notion of the Absolute that is really absolute, without the slightest possibility of material

manifestation. I do not believe that modus essendi and modus operandi might be linked

properly in 19 th century architecture and later.

But Ruskin and the Gothic revivalists were not so uncompromising in terms of strict Jewish

type monotheism. Due to their Christian origin they were more open to the ideas of

‘manifestation’. Manifestation means that the Absolute shows up directly in some natural

phenomena. (In the Japanese culture it is the notion of kami.) The possibility of manifestation

is crucial for architecture, because it connects architecture to the sacred.

The theoreticians of Gothic revival wanted to clean architecture from cheap imitation (read:

Classicism) and offer something more dignified. This is the place where Ruskin made a shift.

In his “Lamp of Beauty” he fills up the vacuum resulted by the purge of the imitations and the

unnecessary with putting nature as the source of inspiration for the architectural form. The

ornament should reflect natural forms, colours as a building is a bit like living being, a shell, a

flower. (As we shall see later the façade of Gaudi’s Casa Battló or the Sagrada Familia is

reflecting these principles.) Actually nature becomes the Absolute, an absolute that is essence

and manifestation in the same time. This is a significant departure from monotheism and a bit

the adoption of pantheism and paganism in general.

This type of pantheism was quite widespread by the end of the 19 th century among artists and

musicians. It is known that Claude Debussy was large influenced by it. Numerous revivalists

of national tradition in Europe – Karoly Kosch, Eliel Saarinen and many others resorted to

pre-Christian forms. AS we will see later, the Viennese art nouveau, the Sezession will paint

on the façade the Latin slogan Ver Sacrum ; Stravinski’s early masterpiece, the ballet Le Sacre

du Printemp, will also mirror this view.

After all Ruskin did not make architecture self-referential either, just changed the referent: it is

not the Classical any more, but natural form. (As we remember the Classical was initially also

referring to the natural: the Egyptian capital to the palm tree, Greek Doric capital to the mail

body, etc.) If you like, architecture is not telling the ‘truth’ either, just telling different stories.

These new stories are, however, very important, because they represent a metaphysics alien to

the Enlightenment thought and represent the revival of pre-Renaissance times. Furthermore,

this Medieval revival stresses the non-Christian or Jewish-Christian component of Medieval

culture. Namely, Medieval culture has had its ‘strictly Christian’ constituent — the idea of

transcendence, for instance — and its ‘pagan’ constituent, condemned as barbaric by the

Renaissance critics. In Gothic architecture the space conception, the airy structures of the

cathedrals expressed the transcendental, the strictly Christian ideas; while the narrative

constituent, the decoration, referring to nature expressed the other component.)

Eugène-Emanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-70) reconstructing numerous Gothic churches put the

emphasis in his researches more on the constructive virtues of Gothic architecture. He

stressed the importance of the establishment of a new style. His sketches influenced Gaudí

and a whole range of his contemporaries: Victor Horta (1861-1947), Henry van de Velde

(1863-1957), Hendrik Petrus Berlage (1856-1934), and many others.

GAUDI’S SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Antonio Gaudí y Cornet Gaudí was born in 1852, the year when John Ruskin published his

Stones of Venice and when Augustus Welby Pugin died in the lunatic asylum. Gaudí’s

birthplace is a small town called Reus (Tarragona district of Catalonia) some 100 kilometres

from Barcelona. He spent, however, most of his childhood in a village called Riudoms where

his father was born. His mother died soon after his birth, his older brother, a physician died

also young and his sister died soon after giving birth, leaving her child to raise for the

grandfather and later to Antonio Gaudí.

Gaudí started his studies of architecture in 1872 at the Escuela Superior d’Arquitectura in

Barcelona, staying until the end of his life in this flourishing city. When Gaudí arrived to

Barcelona, the city was in the heyday of its industrial and urban development: the metro was

being built, world exhibitions held and Wagner operas performed.

In order to understand 19th century culture and politics in Catalonia we have to recall a bit its

history. Catalonia was in the Middle Ages part of the Aragonian kingdom and with the

marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 it was united with Castilia. After a series of wars

Catalonia lost its privileges, national rights, becoming a Spanish province. Later, as a

consequence, Barcelona played a significant role in revolutionary movements against Spain,

and in the widespread of French republican ideals coming from the neighbouring France. In

the 19th century this influence fuelled nationalism and the wish for independence.

The Catalan nationalist movement started at first in literature, around 1850. The writers

searched for medieval themes referring to the period of national independence of Catalonia. In

the 1860s they succeeded to get accepted the Catalan language for official use, they founded

Catalan newspapers and theatre. Following literature, architecture played also a significant

role reviving the Gothic and the mudejar, the architecture of Iberian Muslims. The Catalan

Neo-Gothic style reflects religious and national feelings. (The Catholic Church played an

important role in fostering nationalist ideals. Although the Catholic church is by definition a

supra-national institution uniting mankind in God, in practice during the 19 th century and in

some regions even later it fuelled nationalist movements mainly in order to regain its

influence, simply to be in the mainstream of the events. The biggest failure of this type was

the Vatican’s agreement with Adolf Hitler, which greatly legitimised the dictator in the eyes of

many Europeans.)

Parallel to the aforementioned moves, leftist ideologies also started to take hold in Catalonia,

and Gaudí learned soon about Owens and Fourier. In Catalonia socialism was blended with

Christianity, similarly to some Central European countries.

GAUDÍ’S DESIGN PRACTICES AND THEIR IDEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Gaudí’s biographers point out, that Gaudí spent a considerable time during his childhood in

his father’s coppersmith workshop watching the work with brass. According to them this

contributed largely to Gaudí’s close relation to material and his three-dimensional thinking. I

would go deeper and relate his penchant for material and manual work to his worldview.

According to my hypothesis he wanted to restore the unity of intellectual and manual

creation, bringing back the creation to a pre-Kantian level. Kant introduced the concept of a

priori ideas that were prior to sensual experience coming out directly from human minds .

(This priority of ideas and ideals over material goes back actually to the Jewish Bible . No

wonder, assimilated Jewish thinkers were so eager to join the neo-Kantian school of

philosophy in the 19 th /20 th century.) Modern architecture usually follows this pattern. Le

Corbusier, for instance, spoke about the concept of ‘inhabitation’ which meant for him

making an abstract concept in his head and then implementing it later to a concrete situation,

physical-geographical location. (Please find more about these ideas in my lecture in the

theoretical course Some Philosophical Foundations of Architectural Modernism, paragraphs:

Kant’s synthesis of subject and object.)

Gaudí felt in the building material the element of sacred (this is the often-quoted Gaudí’s

pantheism) and consequently took inspiration from the material. With that the

communication between idea and material became two ways, like during the Middle Ages,

when the master-builder directly experienced stone, working together with the apprentices.

This is in sharp contrast to the modern time architect in the clean office, remote to actual

material creation. (In this respect the CAD is almost an absolute restoring of the priority of

ideas. Curiously when used as a strategic tool it ruins architecture. The best architects

introduce the CAD only in later stages of design when all major decision were already made

and the computer serves solely as a ‘tactic weapon’.)

Gaudí was more a medieval master-builder then a modern architect. (His enemy, the architect

Eugenio d’Ors wrote in the La Veu de Catalunya that Gaudí worked without plans on the

base of his visions he got during the nights. Had it been true he would have followed the

Kantian path.) Gaudí really spent most of his time either on the building site leading the

workers — and often sharing with them some problem solving —, or in his small workshop

working with his model makers and draftsmen.

It has been recorded that during the construction of Park Güell Gaudí appeared every day

precisely at three o’clock on the site and discussed the actual problems with his workers. Thus

the architect, the 14 men strong bricklayer group and other craftsmen shared the process and

the joy of creation. It is known that the form of the famous bench there was determined also

by the workers.

This method of work freed Gaudí to represent (and also to think) in two-dimensional terms

(elevations, sections, floor plans) and enabled him to include solutions that were not possible

to represent by conventional 2D techniques. Deploying models and improvisations on the

spot enabled him to use the specific vaults, tilted columns. This improvisation technique

started already with the Casa Vicens.

If Gaudí did not like a detail he ordered to it demolish and build again. This does not mean

that he did not prepare sketches at all, just that his priorities were different. It is known that

the Casa Milà was constructed practically without detailed plans. This method of work made

Gaudí famous in Spain.

Cultural Background

Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), the architectural theorist and Gothic revivalist, John Ruskin, the

architectural essayist and the great German composer, Richard Wagner determined Gaudí’s

adopted cultural background. There is even a special link between Wagner’s Germanic

mythology and Barcelona: the Montsalvat monastery keeping the holy Grail mentioned in

[architecture ebook] - Biografia 01 - Antonio Gaudi.pdf

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