Item: La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which is entering its 128th year of construction, which makes it a well managed project by Gothic Cathedral standards. A recent article in National Geographic does a good job of bringing the work into focus.
I prefer it unfinished--it's maybe the Italian in me, but a work in progress has so much more vitality than a complete building. Built works are an illusion that is necessary to placate donors and specific client groups. The contractor and lenders can't close their books until they have that legal fiction of being finished. The occupants and users of architecture know that everything is still in motion. A light fixture needs to be installed, a desk near the door needs to be refinished, a piece of sculpture is planned for a hallway near the courtyard, a new paint color will bring the third floor office to life. The list goes on. People go on. The building exists as a platform for activity. It is the dinner set for the meal.
Besides, I think that Gaudi's final design is too cluttered with towers. And, because I can be peevish about it, I think that our modern detailing doesn't have the panache of the old stuff. They're being to cautious and too neat. An organic building has to display a certain roughness and craziness in my opinion.
I'm conflicted about La Sagrada Familia. I want to like it, primarily to applaud the fact that buildings this epic are still being erected in my lifetime. However, I find myself viscerally repelled by the design. It strikes me as a gaudy behemoth, a towering drip castle so over-designed so as to send the eye skittering across its facade. David, professional response?
ReplyDeleteIf the Sagrada Familia fails the initial taste test for you then the architect of record, i.e. Gaudi, doesn't have a defensible position. Modern critics have made some efforts to objectify the process by which we assess the value of a work of architecture.But ultimately, the visceral reaction has the most greatest force. Because it is religious structure it has to live up to a whole set of standards that derive from the Gothic and Classical traditions.
ReplyDeleteA trip to Barcelona may be worthwhile, but the initial experience is still bitter. I'll try to post on this later. In sum, there is no satisfactory answer, and if a group of intellectuals make the claim that it is "good" then they picked the wrong decade to make that type of argument. Dave S