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Barcelona Our Hotel Train rolled through the night across the Spanish plain toward Barcelona, and we awakened for breakfast as we reached the coast.

interminable coastal development

For the last two hours of our ride, interminable charmless coastal development stood between us and the sea, with more coming along. Already we could tell that Barcelona's position as Spain's wealthiest city extended far into the countryside. Unfortunately, none of Barcelona's reputation for elegant architecture has migrated to these excrescences.

Barcelona boomed in the first two decades of the 20th Century as a result of rapid urbanization -- an interesting time to boom -- and again recently around the 1998 Olympics. The most densely populated area in Spain, and one of Europe's most thickly settled areas, vibrates with life. It is the most consciously architected city I have ever visited, an inheritance of the turn of the 20th Century "nouveau" era and the lengthened shadow of its greatest native builder, Antonio Gaudí. It is quite surprising and unexpected to be in a city that takes pride in the appearance of its buildings -- so many of its buildings, not just one or two. In the central section bad buildings -- constructed just to throw up shelter and create rentable space -- are unusual. Consequently, Catalunyans look up proudly in their city.

typical 1920s building detail

a "green" modern building

Apparently, once a revolutionary movement like this begins in a city, it's over for schlock architects. Not surprisingly, they have resisted enthusiastically and successfully in every American city, and nearly every European city! For one who (like me) has little but contempt for architects and architecture as an "art", this city is eye-opening.

Barcelona is an expensive city to live in or visit -- high spirits and pride do not come cheap. Recent architecture has begun the long slide down through cost effectiveness to mediocrity, but still the shadow of Gaudí and his followers make builders in this city think twice before building badly. We rode around for quite awhile in happy shock -- this city is a different animal. The city plan cuts the corners off each residential block, forming large and gracious intersections at every corner. It's a big city, and the richly ornamented neighborhoods and abundant greenery seems to go on endlessly.

Olympic-era municipal sculpture

"Street of Discord" Gaudí took his inspiration from natural forms, and managed to create facades and details that gloried in them, while some of his students found a geometrical and almost Moorish way to elaborate the same forms. In a single block, Barcelona gives a workshop in playful yet lasting architectural diversity.

Not far from the central square, on one block, the five "greats" each built a tall house for a wealthy client, and while the result is not exactly pleasing -- residents term this "the Street of Discord" -- the personality of each building plays with its neighbors in interesting ways. Sadly for the photographer, trees, trolley lines, stoplights, and the mechanics of urbanism make photography difficult. One stands on the wide sidewalk across the street and wonders...

one by Gaudí, and right next door, one by his star pupil

Gaudí's model of the Casa Milà roof rooftop chimney pot sculpture garden

For me, and soon for Rochelle and Sienna too, the visit to Barcelona became an inquiry into the way Gaudí thought, worked, and built. There are so many of his buildings here in Barcelona that we could visit only a few. Gaudí's "most important civil work" is a perfect place to start: Casa Milà, recognized as a World Heritage site and operated as a Cultural Center and museum celebrating Gaudí's work and age. Full of models, drawings, and photographs, the museum is tucked in under the arches in the attic -- a perfect place for it. the arches are thrilling The roof's load-bearing arches are made from tiles on edge, only two and three thick, in abundant redundancy, like whale ribs.

Upstairs, on the fantastical rooftop, in the distance we could see "the other shoe" -- Gaudí's most important work, the magnificent church of Sagrada Familia, a work of an entirely different order, a work in progress three quarters of a century after the master's unfortunate death beneath the wheels of a Barcelona trolley. Downstairs, an apartment designed by Gaudí and occupied for some time by the enlightened and no doubt delighted owners of the building, the Milà family, fills the whole top floor.

Sagrada Familia through a Casa Milà arch

chairs designed by a student

even the bathroom is curvy

the circular interior light well

The keepers of the Gaudí Museum have furnished and restored the sense of the times when the building was finished -- the early 1920s. Imagine how this community must have felt about the explosion of "Gaudísmo" that transformed their city in two decades. Clearly, the record shows that they were thrilled: Gaudí's work was enthusiastically sponsored by a number of patrons, and is treated now as an enduring and living treasure. To my newly-opened eyes, his principles are simple: use natural forms appropriate to the shape to be accommodated. So obvious, and yet so revolutionary!

I hope you've been wondering about this page's background. It's made of Gaudí's hexagonal paving tiles used on the sidewalks of Barcelona's central district. Simple, practical, more natural than cobbles or square tiles, it's one more evidence of his brilliance. The residents of Barcelona can look up, but they can also look down and see beauty ...can you ever remember doing that in your favorite city?

Gaudí's sidewalk paver

Antonio Gaudí

You may also have wondered, as I did, what the Master looked like. There are surprisingly few photographs, as he was apparently a retiring and self-effacing man. He was quick to delegate work to gifted students, and he attracted many; much of his work is conceptual, with the execution managed by one of his associates. Aspects of his life were tragic, but he was quick to brush adversity aside and refocus on the work.

In love with Gaudí, we were soon in love with Barcelona too, despite the fact that it is as polluted, busy, and fatiguing as any other great city. We found delightful food, attended another Flamenco show, and wandered the night-time streets finding delights to be revisited the next day. Everywhere we saw pleasing details -- street lights on a side street, art nouveau embellishments of a Chinese Restaurant -- showing how much the Catalunyans love their city, too. Barcelona's market

The flavor of the city, established a hundred years ago, is passed along through its buildings to the present, where pride in good taste and good living touches everything. bakery window Every great city should have a market, and while Barcelona's is small, it is exquisitely laid out and varied. I happily wandered, buying occasional delights -- fabulous olives, wonderful figs, dates still on their stems, fifty different kinds of citrus -- and taking pictures for my as-yet-unposted photographic ode to markets.

The mechanics of traveling and living consumed a good part of our second day in Barcelona, and so it was already mid-afternoon by the time we found our way, via Barcelona's excellent metro, to Gaudí's great church, Sagrada Familia. This work deserves, and gets, its own page here, and if you must, you can jump over there and miss the rest of Barcelona ... or you can stay here a little longer and visit another of the requirements that every great city must satisfy, a great park -- in Barcelona, a park designed by Gaudí.

Güell Park's famous lizard stairs One scheme of Gaudí's that did not work was the housing development now known as Güell Park. He had finished a series of buildings for the wealthy Güell family, but housing was needed for workers and the growing middle class, and unused land on the slopes behind Barcelona beckoned. Ambitious plans for housing integrated with a park were drawn up, and the first "model home" was built by Gaudí's most loyal assistant. Then the bubble burst; the Maestro was run down by a trolley, and the plans for housing were abandoned ... but the park remained, and was taken over by the city. sinuous bench circling the plaza organic forms support a roadway	We got to Güell Park just as the light was failing, and so my photographs do not do it justice -- it is a light and light-hearted place despite the somewhat sad story attending its birth. Obviously, Gaudí and his friends and associates were busy reinventing Barcelona, and an amazing amount of work accompanied the city's mushrooming growth. There must have been a lot of wealth, and one striking fact is the vision shared by the patrons and the builders. Considering the revolutionary quality of this vision, their unanimity is astonishing. (In Caspar, we disagree about pathways.) the house in Güell Park fanciful towers of the entry
	The house in Güell Park is modest, unlike most of Gaudí's buildings done for wealthy clients, and the more pleasing for its modesty. Unlike Casa Milà and the Güell residences, one can easily imagine Gaudí or his assistant actually living here. (Gaudí typically lived in monkish quarters on his job sites; for the last years of his life he lived in a cell beside his work room at Sagrada Familia.) The detailing here is simple, reiterative, thoughtful, collaborative, and very much of a piece with the site and the times. Too bad this settlement didn't get finished; we might have learned a different way of handling tract homes.

Before taking you to Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece, here are a couple of details that may help you understand his work. His father was an architectural iron worker, and Gaudí's iron work is at once the skeleton and the final level of ornamentation of all his work. By its nature, iron is skeletal and maleable, and there is no doubt that "thinking in iron" helped Gaudí apprehend and perfect his organic forms. Cement and plaster provide the flesh that covers this skeleton; these materials can be cast or shaped fluidly to make a finished shape, are abundant, inexpensive, and well-suited to the Catalunyan climate. Colorful tile-work on a Gaudí building

the gate at the Güell residences Gaudí was fascinated by surfaces, and by the many ways they could be decorated. As he built for the ages, he was partial to glass and tile, but he was willing to use paint, too, so long as the painted surface forms made it feasible to keep the paint fresh and vivid.

Having seen some of the elements employed in human scale buildings, come with me now to see them applied to a building that transcends humanity and shows us new ways to build: the Church of Sagrada Familia

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