Sagrada Familia

Barcelona, Spain

Contributed by Project for Public Spaces

The grandest example of Gaudi's architecture.

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10/31/04 albert chua said:

does look like a place to visit!!

08/15/05 Kate Spaulding said:

The nature cathedral is truly amazing. Going to the top and taking pictures between the spires is really unbelievable. The back looks like an intricately dripped sand castle and nature is a major theme all throughout the design. The cathedral is still under construction because Gaudi felt it should be an ongoing work towards perfection. I personally think it's already perfect.

08/06/07 diego rosa said:

Seventy years after the death of the man who designed the Sagrada Familia cathedral, his most famous work still lacks a roof. Not to worry. Those carrying forward one of the most exotic construction projects of modern times say that -- with luck and a lot of money -- the cathedral will be completed in only another half-century, more or less. Its spires topped by plant-like shapes or covered with glazed ceramics and looking like giant lollipops, the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) cathedral is a monument to fantastic dreams and perseverance. Designed by architect Antoni Gaudi, famed for incorporating nature's designs into his work, the cathedral dominates the Barcelona skyline Gaudi, who died in 1926 after being struck by a trolley, never expected the cathedral to be completed in his lifetime. Begun in 1882, only one facade was finished when he died. The project, along with Gaudi's charts and scale models, was handed over to another architect. But in 1936, as civil war engulfed Spain, an anti-clerical mob stormed into the Sagrada Familia, burned the design plans and smashed plaster models of the project. Architect Lluis Bonet helped remove the shards and painstakingly reconstructed the models. Today, they are used as a guide for converting Gaudi's dream into reality. It is being built around his remains -- the architect is entombed in the cathedral. Bonet's son, Jordi Bonet, is now overseeing the project. The project, which in 1995 cost $3.2 million, is financed by private donations and visitor entrance fees. Sculptures are perched on the cathedral. Some show Christ's crucifixion with distorted and nightmarish faces. Some critics say Gaudi wouldn't have wanted the sculptures, and that work on the cathedral should never have proceeded after the destruction of the design plans. The half-completed Sagrada Familia is, along with St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York, one of the longest-running construction projects under way in the world today. As an endless procession of tourists chattering in Japanese, Italian and other languages strolled through the cathedral on a recent sunny day, a yellow crane hoisted building materials to workers on scaffolding. The work is being speeded up by technology. A computer-guided saw can chisel a granite column in one-sixth the time it takes by hand. Still, the cathedral probably won't be completed in Bonet's lifetime. Others will have to inherit the task of turning a grandiose dream into reality.