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Portrait of Antoni Gaudí

Architecture · Modernist

Antoni Gaudí

1852–1926 · Catalan (Spanish)

Catalan Modernisme — structural geometry from nature

The great architect of Catalan Modernisme, who turned Barcelona into a private museum of his own work. Gaudí built almost nothing outside Catalonia and almost nothing for anyone but a small circle of patrons, above all the industrialist Eusebi Güell. He worked out his forms not on paper but with hanging chain models, photographed and turned upside down, so that his catenary arches and leaning columns follow the lines of force exactly. Seven of his works are inscribed by UNESCO.

How to spot them

  • ▸Trencadís — mosaic made from smashed tiles and crockery pressed into curved surfaces
  • ▸Catenary arches, hyperboloid vaults and columns that lean like tree trunks; no straight line if a curve will do
  • ▸Wrought iron worked like seaweed, chimneys shaped as helmeted warriors, roofs scaled like a dragon
  • ▸Quiz clue: 'Modernisme', 'Eixample', 'Eusebi Güell', 'killed by a tram'
  • ▸He is buried in the crypt of the church he spent his last years on — see the separate Sagrada Família entry

Key buildings

A Barcelona house on the Passeig de Gràcia with bone-like balconies, a scaled roof and a cross-topped turret read as St George's lance in the dragon (1906)

Passeig de Gràcia, Barcelona

Casa Batlló — known locally as the casa dels ossos, the house of bones

An apartment block of undulating grey stone, nicknamed 'the quarry', with a roof terrace of warrior-helmet chimneys (1912)

Passeig de Gràcia, Barcelona

Casa Milà, universally called La Pedrera — his last secular building

A hillside estate of viaducts and a serpentine mosaic bench, guarded by a mosaic salamander on the entrance steps (1914)

Carmel Hill, Barcelona

Park Güell — a failed garden-city development, now a public park; the bench is largely by Josep Maria Jujol

A mansion off the Rambla with parabolic entrance arches, a central hall rising to a starry perforated dome, and twenty mosaic chimneys (1888)

Carrer Nou de la Rambla, Barcelona

Palau Güell — the town house that cemented his relationship with Eusebi Güell

His first major house, a suburban villa clad in green-and-white checkerboard tiles and marigold motifs (1885)

Gràcia, Barcelona

Casa Vicens, built for the tile manufacturer Manuel Vicens; opened to the public in 2017

A workers' colony chapel of which only the crypt was built, its brick piers leaning at angles derived from an upside-down model of strings and weights (1914)

Santa Coloma de Cervelló, Catalonia

The Colònia Güell crypt — the laboratory in which the later church's structure was worked out

Key ideas

  • Funicular (hanging chain) models: a model of strings loaded with small shot hangs in pure tension; inverted, it gives a structure in pure compression, so no flying buttresses are needed
  • Ruled surfaces — hyperboloids, helicoids, conoids and paraboloids — let complex curves be cut by straight-edged tools and built by ordinary masons
  • Nature as the model: 'Originality consists in returning to the origin'
  • Trencadís: broken ceramic and glass fragments will clad a doubly curved surface where flat tiles will not

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born 25 June 1852 in the Reus area of Catalonia; on graduating in 1878 the school director said he did not know whether the title had gone to a madman or a genius
  • •Knocked down by a tram on Barcelona's Gran Via on 7 June 1926 and, shabbily dressed and taken for a beggar, died three days later on 10 June
  • •His only municipal prize was Barcelona city council's building of the year award for Casa Calvet in 1900 — his most conventional design
  • •UNESCO inscribed 'Works of Antoni Gaudí' in 1984, extended in 2005 to seven properties
  • •Other works include Bellesguard in Barcelona, El Capricho at Comillas in Cantabria and the Episcopal Palace of Astorga in León
  • •Pope Francis declared him Venerable in April 2025, a step towards beatification; he is often called 'God's architect'
  • •His plaster models and drawings were destroyed when anarchists burned his workshop in 1936, so later work has been reconstructed from fragments and photographs
  • •Josep Maria Jujol was his most important collaborator, responsible for much of the colour work at Park Güell and Casa Milà

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources