Antoni Gaudi
Antoni Gaudí was a Catalan architect whose work is structurally inventive to a degree that has taken a century to reproduce, and whose principal building remains unfinished more than a hundred years after his death. Born in Reus or Riudoms in 1852 to a family of coppersmiths, he attributed his sense of three-dimensional space to watching his father shape sheet metal into vessels. He graduated from the Barcelona architecture school in 1878, its director remarking that he had given the degree either to a genius or to a madman. His early commissions came through Eusebi Güell, a textile industrialist who became his patron for four decades and financed the Palau Güell, the crypt at Colònia Güell and Park Güell. His method was empirical rather than mathematical. To find the shape that carries load in pure compression he built hanging chain models weighted with birdshot, photographed them and inverted the image — the catenary arch, which needs no buttressing. He used ruled surfaces, hyperbolic paraboloids and helicoids because they are structurally efficient and can be built by straight-edged formwork, and he covered surfaces in trencadís, mosaic made from broken tile. He took over the Sagrada Família in 1883 at thirty-one and worked on it for forty-three years, the last twelve exclusively, living on the site and soliciting donations door to door. He knew he would not finish it and designed a structure that others could continue. Casa Batlló and Casa Milà followed in 1904-12. He was hit by a tram on 7 June 1926 and, taken for a beggar because of his shabby clothes, was not immediately recognised; he died three days later. The church is still under construction.
- Lived: 1852 CE – 1926 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: architect
