Meet Gaudí, the master of Barcelona, ​​Spain

This book tells the story of a man who built several buildings that have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The buildings born from his fingertips are in themselves magnificent works of art, inspiring everyone, and when you look inside them, you will find the architect's life and philosophy fully imbued within them.
He is Antoni Gaudi, who designed the extraordinary building called the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
To understand Gaudí's artistic sensibility, it is necessary to examine his life and philosophy. The author weaves together the footsteps of Gaudí's life into a way to understand his art through the material of architecture.
Through this, we examine how an architect's life was born as art through the canvas of architecture.


L'originalitat consisteix en tornar a l'origen.
Originality is going back to the origins.
-Antoni Gaudí i Cornet

Gaudi once said, 'Originality is returning to the origin.'
His philosophy is that originality is necessary for a work to become art, and that this originality can be achieved by returning to the origin.
This book explores the origins of Gaudí's life and his originality based on his philosophy.
Through the life of an architect, it provides readers with an opportunity to reflect on what art is and what originality is that moves so many people.
Through this, you will be able to meet ‘the human Gaudi’ who came to this land as ‘the architect of God.’

An old man emerges from the construction site of the Sagrada Familia cathedral, its skeleton exposed, dusting himself off.
Looking at the hands of this old man with white hair and a white beard, he looks like a construction worker, as they are dirty, calloused, and covered in wounds.
--- p.10

The name we call Gaudi is not actually his name.
His full name is Antoni Gaudii Cornet, which can be written as 'Antoni of the father Saint GaudI and i of the mother Saint Cornet'.
--- p.19

Wasn't it God's will, as his mother said, that he, a "little man," saw through pain the architecture and nature of God that others could not see?
--- p.22

If you fix both ends of an iron chain and let the middle part hang naturally, a curve will be created by gravity. If you look at this hanging curve in a mirror, the image will be reversed and the curve will appear as a raised arch.
This is called a 'Catenary Arch'.
--- p.26

Gaudí, Toda, and Rivera stand in front of a monastery that has been left in ruins after suffering hardships for the past 35 years.
Just like the Peach Garden Oath of Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, he vowed to “restore not only what remains now, but also everything that once existed, and revive the glory of the monastery.”
--- p.34

The ornate appearance of Casa Vicens may be criticized as being overly symbolic and focused on decoration, but Gaudi's quotes show that he never forgot the fundamentals of architecture.
--- p.101

His dream is well reflected in the name of Park Guell. Instead of the Catalan word for park, 'parc', or the Spanish word 'parque', he used the English word because he modeled it after an English garden city*.
--- p.127

Gaudí, who was stubborn when it came to construction, pushed ahead with the construction with his characteristic sarcasm, saying, “If they want, tell them I will cut the column like cheese and inscribe on its clean cut surface ‘Cut by the city’s desk-bound order.’”
--- p.161

However, the neo-Gothic cathedral designed by Villar, measuring 40 meters wide, 97 meters long, and 85 meters high, was so overwhelmingly tall that I could not feel the same emotion I had felt at Santa Casa.
(...) because he was a veteran and expert in cathedral architecture, and was a famous architect who later became the president of the Barcelona School of Architecture after Lusent.
--- p.179

The 'Nativity Façade' consists of four doors, from bottom to top, three large gables (triangular walls projecting outward) covering the doors, and four bell towers.
--- p.185

In 1925, Gaudí felt that he did not have much time left.
He is already 73 years old and does not have much time left to live, but after seeing the Sagrada Familia Cathedral, which still has a lot of construction left, he decides to move.

--- p.210