Casa Mila

At this point my mind was overflowing with gaudi’s foreign ideas. Natural forms translated to structure, plastic and colorful materials, curvilinear forms, calibration of the body walking through landscapes. My next stop, casa mila, would serve as a synthesis between structure and man made terrain. Originally named el perdera or ‘the quarry’, casa mila was quite controversial when it first went into construction in the bourgeois section of town. Twisted strap iron guardrails on wavy balconies signal to the visitor this is no ordinary housing complex. The organization is rather straightforward. The housing is organized around 2 elliptical courtyards... one small and one large. A private winding entrance stair with insect wing shaped canopy along the first floor of the large courtyard provided the owners of casa mila their own separate entry for a massive apartment that occupied the entire second floor. 

An eight floor stair brought me to the top of the complex. A playful up and down roof landscape of large guard-like figures... some small, some large, some grouped together. Below this fantasy landscape was a surprising attic made of reticulated thin brick arches snaking around cylindrical masonry volume supports underneath the sculptures above. A gaudi exhibit lined the attic making for a perfect setting to explore his ideas. 

One floor down, an apartment outfitted 1920s style showed how a family would occupy a typical apartment. The ceilings were quite elastic, often with vegetal cast plaster shapes. The apartment seemed to be laid out like a winding necklace. Imagine the beads of the necklace representing different functions of the house. Then imagine the necklace wrapping around like a figure 8 around the interior courtyards. servant rooms and kids chambers lined up first, surprisingly showing the kids proximity to their caretakers rather than their parents. Then the kitchen and the links to the public functions of the house such as the dining room and living room with intricate wood parquet floors and lavish furniture followed after the servant’s quarters. Finally, the bedrooms and office space branched off the living room. Between each space, the portal for the door was specially designed to reinforce the transition from one room’s function to another room.

Parc Guell

With 5 hours left in Barcelona, I took a taxi to Parc guell to save time. When I arrived, i was surprised the park was sold out for the day. they only let in 400 people in per hour. Luckily, I found out you could book a guided tour to get in. I asked for the next tour at the ticket booth. Originally they said there were none left, then they said it was in Catalan at 12:30. I was thinking about loafing around for 2 hours, and I asked the teller again if there were any earlier tours... when the ticket seller said there was actually a French tour starting in 5 minutes, i was more than willing to let myself be guided in French to roam around the gardens. It didn’t matter which language a tour guide was speaking. It was apparent to me what gaudi was doing in architectural language. First, the paths were curvilinear and organic and winded down the terraced hillside. Unlike Olmsted, some of the branching pathways were very sharp. 

The parapet walls were rounded on top giving a very open transition between park and city. I found out some more interesting tidbits which may or may not be true between my poor French listening comprehension and my general inattention to tour guides... The crushed ceramics used to clad the walkways were ideal for their colors and their ability to clad complex geometries. Guell hired gaudi to make a park to create a respite from the pollution of the city below. Originally guell planned to make 60 houses on the site, but eventually only made 2. Structurally, the sloped arcade columns are formed like trees on an incline and support the stone pathways above. The central gathering space is supported by a forest of columns between shallow umbrella shell structures. Each umbrella is adorned with a ceramic pattern story panel mosaic. The edge of the gathering space is a continuous snaking ceramic bench replete with scuppers emptying out to gutter channels for water. At the base of the park were two gingerbread house-like structures with ceramic glazed frosting on tops.

Sagrada Familia

I got up early and was dreading waiting in vain at sagrada familia. The online tickets were somehow sold out last night but when I checked again in the morning I got a ticket. Give me an inch, I take a mile. Outside the church were Koreans, Japanese and Chinese tourists... the only tourists willing to wake up early on New Year’s Day. I spend time in a park across from the sagrada familia, attempting to take the perfect photo of the church but pay more attention to a smoking bocce player to my side. 

When I finally entered the church I asked if there were any cancellations for the tower ascent since they were all sold out online. To my surprise there was a spare ticket. As I was leaving, a woman came by to purchase two tower tickets but she didn’t have a credit card to purchase it. She looked and sounded distressed. I started walking away but then I let her use my credit card.. she paid me euros. A random act of kindness because god let me take a tour of the tower and inside the church today. Going up the tower there are no backpacks allowed. By the entry is a row of coin operated lockers. Of course I got rid of all my coins yesterday to shed weight. I would have to go outside to get coins and come back. At that point the security guard offered to lend me a euro to use the locker. She joked to her friend her McDonalds breakfast would have to wait. I told her it was karma. I helped a woman buy tickets a few moments ago, and now the guard helped me.

The elevator takes you up 65 meters up the southeast tower. You then follow 400 steps down weaving between spires in the process. I mention to the guard that the Eiffel Tower ascent to the first base is 392 steps... so comparable to the ascent I was about to make. The lookout platforms are near the top with this open mesh guardrails. From the top, you can see the colorful tops of the spires and the city of Barcelona rolling to the sea beyond. Only 1 guardrail winds down the spire stair along the exterior wall. The inside of the stair is open to an abyss of a hole one could fall 65 meters down.

I held the stair railing tight. Every so often, a scupper drain interrupted the steps, or a meshed window punctuated the path providing illumination. Momentarily I would put my life at risk for a stupid picture, then proceed down again. When I exited the stair and entered the nave dizzy from spiraling down the narrow spire, the light was now steaming through the stained glass windows. Arranged in gradient opacities with more opaque panels on the bottom... and translucent on top, the church felt extremely light. The columns followed funicular pathways and intersect at lit orb-like nodes. The pathways were determined by hanging weights with chains. Gaudi used this method of structural analysis to make sure all the compression loads of the masonry structure were directed to the ground. The effect of the branching columns and dappled colored light streaming into the church was like light coming through the leaves in the canopy of the forest. The natural feeling of the church was further reinforced with the shapes of some of the columns. They looked like the trajectory of helicoid leaf plant growth frozen in stone. At the tops of some of the spires were natural forms like shells and fruit or the 4 sided cross of a cypress seed cone. The hyperbolic paraboloid geometries of the window edges and ceiling vaults allowed more light in and spread sound waves out. Symmetrical in nature like a complex organism one could see many organic forms emerging from the surfaces of the church. I would later find out from the original gaudi models that gaudi worked with plaster models. This must have been a laborious complex process to make the formwork to cast these forms. The architects of the church are aiming to finish the construction of the church on 2026 —the 100 year anniversary of gaudi’s death. Today, the design process is aided by 3D computer modeling and 3D printing.

Eating Grapes

Hardly any people boarded the train at the sagrada familia station. But as the train headed westward, more and more people crammed into the train. I was pressed against the subway side door and felt a real sense of claustrophobia for the first time in my life. The Spanish didn’t mind being packed in. They were drunk and chanting songs. The air was very heavy with respiration... then the train halted a short eternity in a station. I felt like I was trapped in a boa constrictor mass of bodies. With every move I made, the smaller the space around me became. After a few minutes, people started exiting. Apparently a passenger fainted and was being attended to on the platform. I was happy to walk to plaza espana rather than be squeezed in an airless train. At the plaza, were 2 towers, a magic light fountain with lights and fire flares and fireworks displays above. When the clock stuck 12, with each bell toll, the revelers ate a grape. 12 in all for good luck. The plaza was very crowded. A little bit menacing. I was alone but surrounded by thousands... I stood between a family, and old couples, a group of middle aged women. It was my first New Year’s alone. My first new year in another land. I ate the bag of half rotten grapes my hotel provided for good luck. I spit the seeds out in the crowd... and took pictures of the people around me. Earlier that night I had aimlessly roamed the ramblas boulevard and it’s side streets and marveled how the center was occupied by the people between two rows of tall plane trees. The further north I walked the more deserted the city became. It seemed like everyone in the city was drawn towards plaza espagna like a magnet.