AMAZING EXPERIENCES

Gaudi's Barcelona

I fell in love with Barcelona. Part of the reason for that is the architecture of Antoni Gaudi. His style is completely unique. He was absolutely inspired by nature and instead of relying on geometric shapes to design buildings, he used the angles, curves and colors found in nature. He used the parabolic arch to get away from traditional structures and decorated buildings with broken tiles and water textures. I find his work incredibly inspiring and feel that Barcelona takes on some of that personality of individuality and creativity.

The Sagrada Familia is probably the most original, innovative and creative building I've ever seen. This church was designed by Antoni Gaudi and he spent the last 16 years of his life working on bringing it to fruition. Gaudi was a very religious man and had a desire to pay tribute to Jesus, Joseph and Mary with a church that was inspired by nature. He lived on the site while constructing the building and lived such a reclusive, non-materialistic life that when he was run down by a tram, they assumed him to be a homeless person and took him to the indigent hospital, where he died a few days later.

La Pedrera is not the original name of the apartment building created between 1906-1910. The original name is Casa Mila. "La Pedrera" means "stone quarry" and was so-named as an attack from Barcelona's intellectual community who hated this new style of architecture. The building truly is a complete departure from established construction principles of the time and was brilliantly executed. I think it's interesting that the name has stuck and we all refer to this piece of genius as quarry. The most remarkable area is the roof where you can see chimneys shaped like sentries and whirling domes and the undulating surface and balconies combine to make you feel as though you were out in nature. The Mila family had an apartment on the ground floor of this building and it has been set up as a museum so you can walk through and see what the rooms looked like when the building was built. In addition, the top floor is a museum that describes Gaudi's style and provides examples of how he is able to support the unique structure of this building.

Casa Batllo is another Antoni Gaudi building and it is just as remarkable as the others we have seen. It is an apartment building and some people are lucky enough to live there today. From the outside, the building evokes a skeletal feeling and it is easy to understand why the locals call this building "casa dels ossos" meaning "house of bones". Once again, Gaudi gets much of his inspiration from nature and has designed the building and the rooms within it in such a way that there are no straight lines to it. Pretty amazing, especially given that this was built in 1905. The roof of this building, like his others, is quite interesting with more of the sentry-esque chimneys as well as an arched area with tiles that makes one thing of a dragon. Another great building by Gaudi and yet another reason for me to respect his work immensely.

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