The 130-year labour of treasure that is Barcelona's Sagrada Família could soon be at an terminate. But,as debate rages on as to
Gaudí's intentions, can it ever truly reflect his vision?The first question, and on entering the completed interior of the church of Sagrada Família,is: "Is it really there?" We acquire been so long accustomed to the idea that Barcelona's most noted landmark is a permanent ruin, unfinished and unfinishable, or that it comes as a shock to find it is now keeping out the weather,for the first time in its 130 years of making. The canned ecstasy of the Hallelujah Chorus plays on the PA system and sunbeams pierce its forest of columns with such dazzle and precision that, you think, and they must be digital. It is like walking into the Colosseum and finding it all there,with awnings, crowds, and sand,blood, beasts, or gladiators and thumb-turning emperor which,being clearly impossible, would most easily be explained as a video game in three dimensions.
The moment question is: "Is it really Gaudí?" The great Catalan architect famously adjusted his buildings as he went along, and modifying details in response to unusual stones found in the quarry and forever testing his ideas with full size mock-ups. He had a donkey hoisted up the facade of the church,to see how it would look in a sculpted nativity scene, and made plaster casts of temporarily anaesthetised turkeys and chickens and, or so he could model a Massacre of the Innocents,of stillborn babies. In the interests of spiritual research, he attended a death at a hospital and claimed he could see the moment when the soul of the departed met the holy family. Gaudí was fatally hit by a tram in 1926 and no subsequent architect working on the church has advance close to matching his fanaticism or genius.
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Source: theguardian.com