Sagrada Família - Table of Contents ....................      Architecture Around the World

2009 Photos
Interior - Sagrada Família

Barcelona, Spain  

Architects:
  • Antoni Gaudí   (Pronounced an TONIO gow DEE on the La Pedrera museum English version Audio Guide)
  • Domènech Sugranyes (after Gaudi's death in 1926 until the Civil War in 1936)
  • Francesc Quintana, Isidre Puig Boada, Lluís Bonet i Gari and Francesc Cardoner
Construction: 1882-2026(?)
Façade sculptures: J. Busquets, Etsuro Sotoo and  Josep Subirachs 
Style: Art Nouveau
Status: UNESCO World Heritage Site

You can take elevators to the top of the inside of the Nativity Facade and Passion Facade, or climb 400 steps. Once at the top, you can climb around the walls and into other towers and enjoy partial views of Barcelona through a jumble of latticed stonework, ceramic decoration, carved buttresses and a variety of sculpture.

Interior

The church plan is that of a Latin cross with five aisles. The central nave vaults reach forty-five metres while the side nave vaults reach thirty metres. The transept has three aisles.

The columns are on a 7.5 metre grid. However, the columns of the apse, resting on del Villar's foundation, do not adhere to the grid, requiring a section of columns of the ambulatory to transition to the grid thus creating a horseshoe pattern to the layout of those columns.

The crossing rests on the four central columns of porphyry supporting a great hyperboloid surrounded by two rings of twelve hyperboloids (currently under construction).

The central vault reaches sixty metres.

The apse will be capped by a hyperboloid vault reaching seventy-five metres.

Gaudí intended that a visitor standing at the main entrance be able to see the vaults of the nave, crossing, and apse, thus the graduated increase in vault loftiness.

The columns of the interior are a unique Gaudí design. Besides branching to support their load, their ever-changing surfaces are the result of the intersection of various geometric forms. The simplest example is that of a square base evolving into an octagon as the column rises, then a sixteen-sided form, and eventually to a circle. This effect is the result of a three-dimensional intersection of helicoidal columns (for example a square cross-section column twisting clockwise and a similar one twisting counter-clockwise).
- Wikipedia   (8/2010)

2009 Photos






















Gaudi's columns were inspired by nature.



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Photos and their arrangement © 2009 Chuck LaChiusa
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