The Sagrada Familia

The Temple of the Sagrada Familia is generally known as the “Sagrada Familia” and is a large Catholic Church in Barcelona Spain, designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. And begun in 1882 and is still under construction a symbol of Catalan Modernist Architecture and a masterpiece by Gaudi.

Construction began in the Gothic style but project was redesigned to allow the Gaudi influences in 1883 and under his guidance from the general sketch of the building to the new improvements took 31 years and Gaudi dedicating the rest of his life to this project and focused exclusively on the building for the last fifteen years of his life.

One of their most innovative ideas was the design of high circular conical towers that stand on foundations that narrow as they grow taller and twist as they spiral upwards that support a facade of windows.

The temple, when eventually completed, will have 18 towers, four in each of the three-input gates. Gaudi designed the structure as a tribute to religious belief and in the systems of towers that related to biblical references the central tower is dedicated to Jesus.

The arrangements are of six towers with the central tower Cimborio 170 meters tall, four others around it, dedicated to the evangelists, and a second tower dedicated to the Virgin Cimborio.

The interior consists of organic innovative organic forms of columns and domes based hyperboloids paraboloids. .

Gaudi died in 1926 and only one tower had been built. The building project plans exist as a plaster model that was badly damaged during the Spanish Civil War. Work has continued and the Portals of the birth of the Passion and recently works has started on The Glory as well as interior vaults.

Gaudi to the work completed by him before his death like the Nativity facade and crypt, are included by UNESCO in 2005 as a World Heritage Site as The “Works of Antoni Gaudi.

The idea and brief of the building is an exploratory temple dedicated to the Holy Family in a new land through architectural imagery and example. The project benefactor was the bookseller Josep Maria Bocabella, which founded the Association of Devotees of San Jose.

This took a whole block of the place known as El Poblet, near the Camp de l’Arpa in Sant Marti Provençals between Provença streets, Mallorca, Marina and Sardenya.
The project was first started by the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano, who devised a the set as Neo Gothic, Bocabella discarding the idea of making a replica of the Shrine of Loreto which alludes to the home of Joseph and Mary in Nazareth.

The original plans for the church were with three naves and typical Gothic elements with the honeycomb windows exterior buttresses and a high bell-shaped needle.