Antoni Gaudí

Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) was a Catalan architect, born in Reus or nearby Riudoms. He graduated from the Barcelona School of Architecture in 1878 and worked almost entirely in Barcelona. The industrialist Eusebi Güell, whom he met in 1878, became his main patron. Gaudí took over the design of the Sagrada Família church in 1883, and from 1915 he worked on nothing else. He died in 1926 after being hit by a tram.

Gaudí worked out his structures with hanging models: chains or cords weighted with small sandbags, whose shapes, turned upside down, give arches that carry their loads in pure compression. He used these catenary arches and leaning columns in the crypt of the Colònia Güell outside Barcelona and in the branching columns of the Sagrada Família. He covered surfaces in trencadís, a mosaic of broken tile and glass, as on the long curving bench of Park Güell (1900-1914).

His Barcelona houses include Casa Vicens (1883-1888), built of brick with green and white tile; Palau Güell, a town house for Güell; Casa Batlló (1904-1906), a remodeled apartment building with a facade of broken tile and glass; and Casa Milà (1906-1912), whose curving stone facade is carried by columns and beams rather than by load-bearing walls. Seven of his works were listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites between 1984 and 2005.