Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí's famous Sagrada Família in Barcelona became the world's tallest church last month, but the designer's influence extends far beyond the basilica's walls.

L'Eixample

Antoni Gaudí, renowned for transforming Barcelona with his unique architectural vision, devoted much of his life to the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Drawing inspiration from nature and supported by patron Eusebi Güell, Gaudí developed groundbreaking techniques, many of which he first tested at Colonia Güell. 

Construction on the Sagrada Familia has continued for nearly a century after Gaudí's death, with modern architects using advanced technologies to fulfill his ambitious designs. As the cathedral nears completion, Gaudí's influence endures, with additional unbuilt projects, such as a proposed cultural space in New York, still possible if funding is secured.

Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi's life's work reaches new heights

With sweeping rooftops and swirling facades, Spain's most famous architect, Antony Gaudí, transformed his native city of Barcelona. In 1905, Gaudí started his last residential building, the Casa Milà. Taking inspiration from nature, the deeply religious Gaudí believed was to collaborate with God. Here he turned to the rocks of the Spanish coast and to the forms of the sea. And his ultimate collaboration was the towering Sagrada Familia Cathedral that dominates Barcelona's skyline, on which Gaudí worked the majority of his life. Long after his death, for nearly 100 years, construction has continued, with generations of architects using cutting-edge technologies to execute Gaudí's grandest designs, modeled on the natural world like a forest of columns. But the seeds of Gaudí's vision were planted somewhere less grand, a half-built church outside the city. The idea that the building should be introduced in nature, the form can be thought like a butterfly, but also like the pieces of a pine... Pine? Pine cone. In a small industrial town called Colonia Güell. So this was where he tested the techniques and the designs that he would later use in Sagrada Familia. Yes, this was, in fact, his laboratory. A laboratory, says Carlos Canals, the president of the Gaudí World Foundation, where Gaudí experimented with cutting-edge architectural ideas and theories that his contemporaries didn't understand and didn't trust, like a new kind of column. There's a very funny story that one of these columns should be done, and the workers said that they don't want to do it because it would fall down. Then Gaudí came at night with two workers, made it by himself, and within the morning, the rest of the workers arrived. The arch was done. So he said, I'll show you. Yeah, I will show that this works. We continue working. It's okay. One person did seem to understand Gaudí, businessman Eusebi Güell, who became his patron and changed his life. Güell commissioned Gaudí to build the extraordinary Palau Güell and Park Güell in Barcelona. And when he opened a textile factory here at Colonia Güell, he asked Gaudí to build the workers a chapel, setting neither a budget nor a deadline. Gaudí spent a decade here, studying nature to develop visionary new techniques. This is the model created with gravity. So this is an upside-down model. Yes, it's the upside model, and you can see it in the plaster model there, how it should be. So basically, these chains are hanging down, and Gaudí thought, if something hangs upside down, then it will be able to hold itself up, right side up. That's the great discovery of Gaudí and the way of working. That's why he need 10 years to make this and then apply it in Sagrada Familia. This would be the church. When Güell died, funding for his chapel ran out. So that was the crypt. This is where people would actually come. Okay, so then Gaudí never got to finish it. There was no money, and things stopped. But he'd already developed a new way of working, and with the Sagrada Familia, he had a chance to make real the grandest designs inside his head. Whatever he hadn't actually figured out how to build yet, he believed someone eventually would. So he designed for a time when they'd be able to solve some of the problems that they couldn't solve when he was alive. Well, he made the design as he wanted and said that for sure that somebody will find a way to make it even if I'm not here. This faith in the future meant that now, after nearly a century and a half, Gaudí's final work in progress is almost done. But Canal said that doesn't mean the architect is finished. Gaudí left designs for other structures around the world, like this cactus-shaped cultural space in New York, which Canal says is ready to be built. You think it's possible. The plans are there. Technically, the construction is possible. So all that's required is somebody to... Money. Yeah. Money and time. Money came and went during Gaudí's life, but time for the architect inspired by nature to build some of the most original structures in the world was always part of the plan.

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