| ARCHITECTURE
OF ANTONI GAUDI
The architect Antoni Gaudi, early 20th century
Spain, is Tomas' mentor and great inspiration.
Quotes are by Tomas from "The Falcon Room."
CASA
MILA
"The soft, undulating, ripening-fruit façade
of that building has been described as a reincarnation of
the sea, the Mediterranean Ocean with its waves and crests
and breaks. It was totally organic in its conception—there
was not a straight line in it. According to Antoni,
straight lines don’t exist in nature; I can’t
agree with someone more wholeheartedly."
ROOFTOP
OF THE CASA MILA
'The uprising of the Semana Trágica of
1909, with its burning of churches and convents, had convinced
the owners to drop Gaudí’s design for a huge
monument to the Virgin Mary fashioned of stone, gilt metal
and crystal that was to surmount the whole building...What
was left in its place on the roof was a gathering of the
weirdest and wildest and most wonderful chimney pots on
earth: helmeted stone heads—eyes hidden, strange fierce
bird-like heads or shrouded faces, marching up the roof
on a bad trip to nowhere, still searching for the missing
Mary."
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CASA
BATTLO
“Here in this residence, which Antoni began
to remodel for the textile manufacturer Battló in
1904, he created another of his ferociously-eccentric living
sculptures...Gaudí covered the facade with tiles
and disc-shaped colored glass, his beloved mosaic color
washes in green, blue and ochre. The upper balconies—they
watch us, don’t they? –their pierced iron railings
stare at us like huge masks. The lower windows, called the
‘gallery,’ are framed by those organic, pulled-back
curtains of stone and metal.”
LA
SAGRADA FAMILIA CHURCH
"So luminous and full of faith and hope;
I could understand why Gaudí eventually could not
even live anywhere else. It was his personal monument, his
own extremely individual statement about what the portals
of Heaven must look like. Like the finest spun sugar or
blown-glass towers, encrusted with jewel-like ornament and
covered with plant and animal forms; the airiest castle
atop the loftiest peak, and yet more beautiful and incredible
than that. There was nothing else on earth like this church."
LA
SAGRADA FAMILIA CHURCH
“The cathedral was sponsored only by alms
raised from the public,” I said, “and Gaudí
went around as an old man, raising money for it. Can you
imagine the great architect walking around, holding his
rag-tag hat out? The church is still just a shell. Work
stopped during the Civil War and did not restart until the
1950s."
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