Why the Sagrada Família Is a Construction Nightmare

Sagrada Família is exemplary in many ways. It offers us a laboratory where we can observe the development of a particular narration that has been going on for over 100 years. Gaudí’s project is still ongoing. So many of the engineers, architects and designers, the masons working on it, in my opinion, they have continued a tradition to try to unravel or decode, if you like, the original ideas or intentions of Gaudí. So the problem is Gaudí refuses to design in straight lines. That's a construction and logistical nightmare for the builders. Gaudí is unapologetically a naturalist. He avoids straight lines. He mimics the leaves. He mimics motion. And even if you look at all these other works, they kind of follow the same script, which is essentially saying, I am of God, I learn from God, and I speak the language of God, which is the dialect of nature. He disobeys all of these laws of physics and he wants the building to tilt inwards. And this is a technical nightmare. You go to a standard Greek cathedral, the columns are straight. Simple, right? But does Gaudí do simple? No he doesn't. He takes the column. It splits into branches. Gaudí tries to understand the nature of the forces in a parabola. He does it upside down. So he hangs chains and he sees how the forces work. That's essentially how Sagrada distributes its forces. If you get the angles wrong a bit, then everything comes crashing down. It's really brilliant. I mean, to imagine that engineers are reverse engineering what he drew to figure out how this works.