Early
Formative Experiences and Life Lessons
Gaudí
owed much to the early lessons of his father, by profession a
boilermaker; they prepared him to understand spatial concepts and
manual labor. The artisanal nature of his parents’ social station
and profession as boilermakers did not in the least help the social
betterment of their children. His family made significant
sacrifices for Gaudí to attend university, which gave him an
important step up on the social ladder.
When Gaudí came to Barcelona to pursue his studies, he lived with
his brother in the Born neighborhood. There he came to know some o
f
the most important buildings of the city, such as the church of
Santa Maria del Mar, a magnificent sample of the Catalan gothic
exhibiting a full range of constructive language.
On the other hand, it has been claimed—and probably rightly so—that
the Monastery of Poblet was one of the bases upon which the
architect came to
understand the relationship between architecture and the religious
and civil symbolism that upheld the social structure. Gaudí and his
companions Eduard Toda and Josep Ribera studied the monastery ruins
in great detail from 1865 to 1869; the site allowed them first to
develop a youthful idealism and later served as a basis for their
future projects. The Poblet Manuscript dates from this time;
although written by three adolescents contemplating the
reconstruction of the monastery, through it we begin to discern the
essence of not only their architectonic ideas, but also their ideas
concerning the financial and social structure necessary to carry
them out. One author has gone as far as to say that the ruins of
the Monastery of Poblet were Gaudí’s “architectural laboratory.”
The Barcelona
School of Architecture
His time as a student at the School of Architecture allowed
him to meet prestigious professors who were hardly greater than
Gaudí himself. The School had been founded only very recently, and
the professors were generally very young. Among them, Lluís
Domènech i Montaner stands out as one of the pillars of the dawn of
Modernisme.
The solid training acquired at the School of Architecture, with
knowledge of the almost infinite creative horizons it allowed Gaudí
to explore, was a crucial element
in his evolution as an architect. The practical preparation the
school gave him, the knowledge of the most recognized and accepted
architectonic theories, and the availability of abundant quantities
of graphic materials on the world’s ancient and modern architecture
all allowed Gaudí to develop and d
eepen
his own ideas.
John
Ruskin, William Morris, and Viollet-le-Duc
Gaudí biographer J.J. Navarro Arisa believes that Gaudí
probably learned from John Ruskin the constructive rigor and honesty
associated with the power of style as a basis on which to separate
the essential elements from the superfluous in the constructive
process.
William Morris, advocate of ornamentation as an integral part of
architecture— exclusively artisanal ornamentation—also served as a
fount of inspiration for Gaudí. Gaudí always completed all of his
works with the much-desired collaboration of every type of artisan:
ceramicists, plasterers, sculptors, blacksmiths, stucco appliers,
etc.
From Viollet-le-Duc, Gaudí learned rational construction techniques
above all. In a city where eclecticism had come to dominate most
architectonic fields, it was very important that someone establish
which were the essential, and which were the superfluous, elements
in the architectural process. Following in Viollet-le-Duc’s
footsteps, Gaudí paved the way forward to architectural modernity.
