Sagrada Família

Gaudis incredibly famous basilica. It’s so famous that the day after our visit, Pope Leo is also visiting. Which is really cool because the pope was our neighbor back in Rome so now we think he might be taking our travel ideas and making them his own. You don’t know how he is just a copycat.

There’s a lot written about the sagrada and it’s architect, but most of that focuses on the uniqueness of the decorations on the outside what we found most surprising was the Engineering that we went into the building itself. Gaudi was an incredibly gifted structural engineer. Considering that he did a lot of the design work between 1910 and his death in 1926 without the aid of computers he really had to be creative.

One of the most telling techniques that he used was building structures at small scale and hanging weights from the structure. Once he got the structure as light as it could and still hold up the weight he was set. Smartly, he then inverted the hanging system, which would then create a column and roof system that would hold up. Or actually down in this case.

The inside of the Basilica is incredibly bright. On one side is the nativity. The light there is all blue and green, the stained glass, creating beautiful design designs on the floor. The other side is the passion side. They are all the stain glasses, red and fiery. The result in color inside the basilica is a vocative of flame and heat.

And incredibly inventive way visually representing the two parts of the Bible from the nativity to the deathRead more