(dramatic music)
Started in 1883,
the Sagrada Familia is an architectural exception.
Much like the cathedrals of the middle ages
that took countless years or even centuries to build.
Pursuing the immense and crazy dream
of an architectural genius, Antoni Gaudi.
From its initial sketches to its current construction,
the history of this Basilica recounts the obstinate quest
to fully realize a work
that defies the laws of architecture.
Partially built while it's creator was alive,
the Sagrada Familia has become an artistic and technical
adventure for several generations of architects
from around the world,
some dedicating their entire lives to it.
An even more difficult challenge
because the torments of history
partially destroyed the plans and models
of this brilliant creator after his death.
How have his successors continued
and enhanced his work despite the obstacles?
What architectural secrets,
what artistic prowess has the Sagrada Familia revealed
during its 150 years of construction?
(gentle music)
Barcelona, the Catalan capital in the Northeast of Spain.
Today at the Sagrada Familia,
the builders are working on the completion
and the crowning of one of the 18 towers,
each nearing 138 meters high.
However, the ongoing construction
has not kept the building from acquiring worldwide renown.
That's one of its particularities,
becoming a legend even before it's fully built.
Visited by 5 million tourists each year,
it has become the symbol of the city of Barcelona itself.
Mixing nature's creations and Christian symbolism,
its three facades tell the story of Jesus' life.
The nativity facade built entirely under Gaudi's supervision
has already been classified as a World Heritage Site.
The interior resembles an immense forest of columns
looking like giant plants that grew before turning to stone.
What was the initial inspiration
for this incredible monument?
The Sagrada Familia is an extraordinary building.
I mean, Gaudi had developed some new building systems.
He was somebody who had an extraordinary capacity
to play right at the edge, not only of the scientific,
but also of taste.
We have to remember that this is the 19th century,
that there's no computers.
Sagrada Familia is certainly an enigma.
It's taken maybe 120 years
for people to begin to understand it.
Gaudi knew that
he wouldn't finish the monument.
So he made sure to transmit his ideas through drawings
and most importantly models.
Damaged over time and often enigmatic,
today's architects are still trying to decipher them.
To understand the true motivations
behind this huge architectural challenge,
one needs to go back to the origins of the project.
Its story began in 1881 when the very philanthropic
Josep Bocabella and and his group,
the Followers of St. Joseph decided to construct
a temple of atonement, completely financed by charity.
Built to honor the holy family
and christened the Sagrada Familia,
it was meant to redeem the sins of the city of Barcelona
corrupted by the industrial revolution.
The association bought land in an undeveloped area.
The project was entrusted to an architect
who quit several months after the work began.
One of his assistants, who was only 31 at the time,
took over the construction.
His name was Antoni Gaudi.
This young architect had worked on the extension
of one of the major spiritual and cultural sites
in Catalonia, the Monastery of Montserrat,
located 50 kilometers north of Barcelona.
Here in the heart of these magical mountains,
Gaudi found some of the inspiration
of his future great work.
The fantastic peaks of Montserrat
inspired the Sagrada Familia's slender silhouette.
He wanted his church to be a mountain,
a timeless landmark in the Catalan landscape.
Gaudi wasn't an unknown.
He had already proven the depth
of his architectural knowledge, his creativity
and his skill at mixing different styles.
This was especially apparent in the Casa Vicens,
Gaudi's first major project in Barcelona,
which shows the multiple influences
of the young architect, then only 28.
It looks like a free and joyful patchwork
of shapes and patterns imported from various cultures.
Like these arcades,
drawn from Muslim traditions and Japanese louvers.
Everything is in thoughtful harmony
with the surrounding landscape.
Boldly combining naturalism, modernism and Orientalism,
Gaudi used a vast architectural language
that reveals how his imagination worked.
According to Juan Jose Lahuerta,
Director of the Gaudi Chair,
to understand the source of Gaudi's inspiration.
You need to look at the works the young architect studied,
even if it means breaking the myth
of the self-taught genius.
(man speaking Spanish)
The truth is that Gaudi traveled very little.
He wasn't very motivated to go see monuments in person.
Because of this I think he's extremely modern.
Because he's interested in knowing about
the world's architecture, but only through pictures.
The pyramids of Egypt,
Indian, Japanese, Chinese architecture.
These are the images that Gaudi looked at
while he was at school.
And you could see all of this without thinking about
the huge distance between any two pictures
of completely different periods.
And so all of these images accumulated
until his original architecture emerged.
Collage is a fundamental technique in Gaudi's architecture.
And yet the architecture
that truly inspired him throughout his life,
is nature in all its forms.
In fact, this fascination came from his childhood.
Suffering from rheumatism,young Antonio
didn't play much with other children.
In the village of Riudoms where his father worked
as a boiler maker, Gaudi loved to observe nature.
In doing so, he developed both an analytical
and artistic viewpoint that became
a large component of his architecture.
These references to nature became especially important
in his design, starting in the 1900s.
In particular, in the mansions
of some of Barcelona's richest families.
Here, nature is transformed and fantasized,
evoking the landscapes of his youth
where he often returned to rest and reconnect
to the source of his inspiration.
Here he was inspired by the strange shapes
sculpted by the wind and the rain
in the red mountain sandstone.
These similarities and resonances
are found in the architect's most famous works.
As here at the Casa Mila, nicknamed La Pedrera
or the stone quarry.
It's facade looks like a giant sculpture carved in stone,
like a fortress guarded by the chimney warriors
that later inspired the Star Wars creators.
Silhouettes found in the outlines
of his dear Catalan mountainsides.
Gaudi's genius and inspiration run throughout a city
that grew rapidly after 1860.
Faced with a massive rural exodus, the city had to expand.
It's the Eixample, which means extension in Catalan.
These new neighborhoods extended the old city
perfectly geometrically.
Very modern and rational urban planning for the time.
Gaudi brought his most fantastic creations to life
within the context of this city's total metamorphosis.
A city where this gigantic church
gradually took shape in his mind.
To understand the monument's evolution
one must dive into the albums of the Sagrada Familia.
Published in Gaudi's time,
they describe the construction as it advanced.
In April, 1917, the public discovered an image
of the entire project for the first time.
It was a shock.
So we've got here a beautiful feel of,
I would say the extravagance of the building.
Then we have something very unusual,
the central tower going up
with these four big towers coming off it,
which will become like spiral staircases
up towards the heavens as well.
This feels a kind of utopia,
but of course it's a utopia which is now being realized.
Gaudi knew that he would never see the end of the cathedral.
It was impossible.
What he wants to leave is one part finished.
So he just takes one facade, the Nativity Facade,
and just goes straight up.
And that took him,
probably about the last 30 years of his life.
I mean, there's a wonderful photo somewhere in here.
Oh here it is.
This is what he saw when he died or just before he died.
So that forever and a day,
we know what actually Gaudi wanted.
He wanted a narrative.
It had to be after all, a Bible in stone.
Following Gaudi's death in 1926,
building continued according to his wishes.
Even if the main facade wasn't embraced by everyone,
just like all of Gaudi's work.
The modernism that it embodied was harshly criticized
by some of the movements that followed.
It was caricatured in newspapers.
Fortunately Gaudi had his disciples,
notably Domenec Sugranes i Gras,
who worked with him for nearly 30 years,
continuing his work until civil war tore the country apart.
(gunshots banging) (people yelling)
In 1936, nationalists supported by the Church,
fought Republicans who were attacking religious monuments.
Fortunately, the Sagrada Familia was spared,
but Gaudi's workshop next to the building burned.
This workshop was a kind of grotto,
a creative refuge where Gaudi experimented,
drew, designed plans and models for his great work.
Including the extremely precious model of the nave.
Without these elements,
how to continue building the Sagrada Familia
according to its creator's intentions?
How to understand how he worked
and the secrets of his innovations?
The project was completely orphaned at this point.
For his successors, the challenge has been complex.
In order to build the Sagrada Familia,
they had to first reconstruct Gaudi's plaster models.
When construction resumed in the 1950s,
the first step was dealing with this fragmented
documentation, this giant puzzle to recreate.
Nearly 10,000 pieces of Gaudi's original models
had to be identified one by one, before reassembling
and reintegrating them into the whole project.
Today, the process of recreation
is done using virtual models.
This allows them to create the missing pieces on the screen,
and then to make extremely accurate models of the monument.
Like in Gaudi's time, the Sagrada Familia
comes to life in the workshop before construction.
(man speaking Spanish)
Gaudi was looking for verticality,
slenderness, lightness.
Which would also bring light.
He wanted the light to enter through all of the facades
and through the vaults and the naves.
He also wanted the tower structures and the interior
to move upwards and to get the feeling of being elevated
and of spiritual elevation too.
And yet it doesn't need exterior buttresses.
These are improvements on the Gothic style,
as Gaudi himself said.
Gaudi understood perfectly
the mysteries of Gothic architecture.
He had even restored the Palma de Mallorca Cathedral
in the Balearic islands in 1904.
But for him, buttresses were like crutches,
supporting a defective body.
He wanted to build as big, as high,
but without this technique that he considered imperfect.
And so what is the secret of the Sagrada Familia,
whose nave peaks at nearly 70 meters high,
and which is supported by nary a crutch?
The answer lies in one of Gaudi's lesser known works
on the outskirts of Barcelona.
There you'll find a small, unusual church
where Gaudi experimented with a new architectural technique.
(man speaks in Spanish)
Here, all of the columns are slanted
because they follow the direction of the force
of the load that they have to support from above.
It's a self-supporting structure.
Thanks to parabolic shapes and catenary arches.
How do catenary arches work?
Imagine a hanging chain with weights added to it.
The loads are placed along the chain
to create a natural arch shape.
When this shape is inverted and built in brick,
the arch is self-supporting.
Gaudi invented a way
to do the numerical calculations of the structure.
He used a model with strings at the end of which
hung small sacks of lead pellets,
whose weight was proportional to the load
the vault's arch had to support.
Using this method, Gaudi constructed
the entire structure of his church upside down.
The model looked like a strange suspension
of small ropes and weights
that reproduced the system of force
and determined the correct inclination of the columns.
Once turned right side up,
it reveals an edifice capable of rising to over 40 meters
without the support of abutments or buttresses.
Gaudi conceived the columns of the Sagrada Familia
following the same principle.
He created a gigantic model on a one to 10 scale,
which was in the workshop that burned during the civil war.
This model restored and completed
in the second half of the 20th century
helped architects construct the Sagrada Familia's naves.
Beginning in 1997, it took nearly 15 years
to construct the main parts of the nave.
It became clear very quickly, how complex the shapes were
that Gaudi had imagined, tucked away in his workshop.
These strange conglomerations of surfaces
proved simply inconceivable
for the software programs of the time.
So they called upon Mark Burry,
an Australian architect and researcher,
to decipher the nave's complex geometry.
Astonishing thing that Gaudi pulled off
was finding a way to get these surfaces described.
Trouble was he didn't actually explain
how we were to put this into practice.
So I was sort of in charge of finding
the best technology available
around the world for just playing with the geometry.
And none of the architectural software packages
were of any use at all.
And that's why we ended up going to look at other designers
like aircraft designers and boat designers,
and then thus taking parts of the building,
which Gaudi himself had resolved,
even though the models were smashed
and then reverse engineered them.
One by one, Mark Burry managed to extract
the basic shapes that make up
Gaudi's architectural alphabet.
So in this you're seeing all three doubly-ruled surfaces.
The hyperboloid revolution of one sheet,
the hyperbolic parabaloid and the triangular plane,
and the entire nave has been formulated
using that combination.
Today, held up by a forest
of tree-like columns, the main nave displays
45 meter high vaults,
towering above the transept at 60 meters
and reaching 75 meters at the apse.
And all of this without exterior buttresses,
the only building like it in the world.
Gaudi's crazy dream has come true.
We don't know how he would've proceeded technically
to reach this result.
However, we do know that he had imagined
these never-before-seen shapes
for both structural and aesthetic reasons.
In the end, time has been on the side
of this extravagant Sagrada Familia project.
Today's technology will also allow the master's workshop
to be virtually reconstructed,
just as it was before fire destroyed it in 1936.
For Juan Jose Lahuerta,
the Director of the Gaudi chair at the Polytechnic
University of Barcelona, it will be another dream come true.
Hubert Nodex specializes in virtual reality architecture,
together with his colleague, Madelein Faure,
they've created a 3D model of this workspace
with all its details and unusual objects.
It is now possible to visit Gaudi's studio as he left it
before his death almost a century ago.
Wow, it's really spectacular.
You feel like you're there.
It's true that his workshop didn't look like
a typical architect's office.
On the contrary, what we see in Gaudi's workspace
is a grotto packed with all kinds of materials.
His process was to work with his hands,
mixing materials, finding new ones.
This is similar to a handyman's work
who can always find what he needs for the project at hand.
In his mind, there was no difference
between structure and ornament.
No difference between materials.
Architecture can only be understood
as the convergence of all these elements.
It's in this melting pot
of shapes and materials that Gaudi
designed the facade of the nativity.
And firstly, thanks to his plaster models.
Started in 1893, the facade presents
a unique group of sculptures that the artist designed
at the same time as the church's plans,
as an ode to the flora and fauna of the Mediterranean.
In this luxurious decor, Gaudi developed the story
of the birth and the childhood of Christ.
He wanted the positions and the emotions of the figures
to be as realistic as possible.
To achieve this he used casts,
some of which still exist today.
Especially brought from storage for an exhibition,
they show his working methods.
The most diverse creatures came out of his workshop.
A process that sculptor Llorenc Matamala
who created the works in stone from these casts
loved to speak about.
For both animals and humans,
Gaudi was in search of natural authenticity.
For each of his sculptures
he searched for the individual
who could give it an authentic face.
(woman speaks in Spanish)
Here we have a small collection
of photographs, of people who posed as models
for the Sagrada Familia sculptures.
Photography began to play a role early in Gaudi's career.
What's curious about these pictures
is that in certain cases,
we even know the identity of the people
who posed for the Sagrada Familia sculptors.
For example, who was this man?
in this case, it's Mr. Columbus,
who posed for the figure of the apostle Barnabas.
The little summaries on the back,
tell us that often these were passers by.
For instance, here's a beggar,
a vagrant who posed for sculpture models
in exchange for a bit of money.
And this one here is one of the most important models
because he posed for the figure of St. Joseph.
It says his name was Jose Riarre and coincidentally,
he was a carpenter just like Joseph.
Gaudi pursued this quest for authenticity
in even the smallest details.
For instance, when he discovered that the model
for the warrior of king Herod had six toes,
he insisted that it be represented faithfully.
For him, this anomaly signified evil,
the monstrosity of king Herod ordering
the massacre of Bethlehem's children.
Constantly seeking natural body positions,
he hung skeletons in his workshop.
He photographed his models in front of mirrors
to see multiple points of view.
He even went so far as to hoist his plaster experiments
onto the Facade of the Nativity in order to judge
how the perspective distorted them so he could rectify them.
The end result, a bountiful, life-like
and nearly complete tableau.
In fact, when Gaudi died, there were still a few statues
and these three doors missing.
So how to complete the work coherently?
A Japanese sculptor took on this challenge.
Fascinated by the monument, Itsuro Sotoo
began working on it in 1978.
First, he devoted himself to creating the missing statues,
according to Gaudi's process and spirit.
These are the musician angels above the central doorway.
(man speaking Japanese)
It's hard to really understand Gaudi.
But I tried.
Like Gaudi, I searched for models.
I used the same methods.
For example, the angel with the violin
really had an angelic face.
This is the model for the angel with the harp.
We really had a tough time finding someone.
To gain better insight
into the inspiration that guided Gaudi,
Itsuro Sotoo went so far as to convert to Catholicism.
All of the things that I have done
over the last 42 years at the Sagrada Familia
have been like a recurring first encounter with Gaudi.
Each sculpture that I have created
has made me discover things about Gaudi
and brought me a bit closer to him.
In the early 2000s, Itsuro Sotoo was entrusted
with creating the three large doors of the Nativity Facade.
This time, it wasn't about completing
a pre-existing process,
but rather extending the work within a new creation.
It became a tribute to nature, that's completely personal,
but perfectly faithful to Gaudi's thinking.
I can't wait to see it.
We're almost there.
Assisted by fellow sculptor, Shiho Takei,
the artist first models a bed
of intertwined leaves in the earth.
It's a long and meticulous process,
allowing the realization of a plaster cast,
which will then be used to cast the door in bronze.
One finished.
Well, there are a few details to fix.
But it's good.
The installation of the doors
in 2014 and 2015 marks the end
of the Nativity Facade's construction.
The operation takes place at night before visitors arrive.
Imagined as large seven meter panels,
the doors root the Basilica in luxurious nature.
In the West, nature is tamed
for the benefit of civilization.
It's considered a resource.
In the East, especially Japan,
we live with tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions.
These are not things we can control.
Gaudi never went to Asia, let alone Japan.
And yet his way of thinking is very similar
to Japanese thinking in terms of nature.
Thanks to the work of his Japanese disciple,
the Nativity Facade was able to be completed
in the spirit of its creator.
But what about the two other facades
that complete the story of Jesus' life?
The information that Gaudi left on this is scarce,
opening the door to interpretation, but also to controversy,
The Passion Facade was created
based on a photo of the model.
It showed the placement of a certain number of statues
meant to show Jesus's death.
But they still needed to find a sculptor
able to interpret such a manifesto
and accepting the risk of continuing Gaudi's work.
In 1986, a Catalan sculptor was called upon.
Josep Maria Subirachs
devoted 20 years of his life to the project.
This represents a new period
in the history of the Sagrada Familia.
It's the first time that an artist is commissioned
without forcing them to imitate Gaudi's work exactly.
I was granted total freedom
so that my work could be totally personal.
The hundred or sculptures he created
are imbued with expressionism,
far from Gaudi's prized naturalism.
And this created a controversy.
Detractors spoke of betrayal,
maintaining that he should have respected the style
of the only facade made by the master.
Defenders retorted that Subirachs perfectly expressed
the pain and violence
that filled the last two days of Christ's life.
Old conflicts resurfaced,
and showed just how passionate people are
about the Sagrada Familia.
What would Gaudi have thought?
Conversations related by his friend and architect
Juan Bergos give a partial response to this question.
Wishing his work to endure,
like the cathedrals from the middle ages,
Gaudi implicitly granted artistic license to his successors
who are now dealing with the completion of the towers.
Of the 18 towers Gaudi planned,
10 are still under construction.
Most notably the four towers of the Evangelists,
the tower of the Virgin Mary
and the central tower of Jesus Christ
with a height of nearly 170 meters.
For Gaudi, defying the laws of gravity
was an integral part of his project.
This battalion of towers is like a group of sentinels
standing guard in the sky.
Very conscious of breaking a height record,
more than anything, Gaudi wanted his construction
to be a great vessel, capable of atoning for the sins
of a city plagued by the demon of violence.
In 1909, an extremely destructive popular uprising
convinced Gaudi to devote himself exclusively
to his great redemptive church.
Over the entire week of what was known as
the Tragic Week, the Setmana Tragica,
more than 40 monasteries are burnt down.
There's desecration of nuns tombs,
bodies taken out into the street and danced with, skeletons.
It's just total mayhem.
And Gaudi is up on the hill where he lives,
looking down on this city on fire.
And this for Gaudi of course, was in a sense,
the reason why the Sagrada Familia
should exist in the first place, was to pay for the sins.
From that point on,
the Sagrada Familia took on its full meaning
and for its creator truly became an expiatory temple.
Its towers stand above the rooftops of the city
to defend the church against anti clericalism.
The events of the Tragic Week profoundly affected Gaudi.
After this, he turned down all other projects.
The Sagrada Familia became his calling.
My best friends are dead.
I have neither family, nor clients, nor fortune, nothing.
So I can devote myself entirely to the temple.
In 1914, the first world war broke out.
While Barcelona was in a neutral zone,
it was struggling with a deep economic recession.
There was no more money.
Gaudi was forced to go door to door
to finance the construction.
The Sagrada Familia was re-christened
the Cathedral of the Poor.
Gaudi devoted the rest of his life,
especially his last 12 years, to the conception of the most
important and representative parts of the whole project
by making large plaster models.
However, he only sketched the central towers
in the general plans of the work.
Strangely enough, Gaudi left few indications
about the most spectacular part of the monument:
Six towers with enigmatic shapes and decorations.
So where to find the information needed to construct them?
A small, seemingly minor edifice provided the answer.
Gaudi designed a very important element,
which is the sacristy.
The sacristy is a 40-meter-high parabolic dome,
of which, following a great deal of work and reflection,
Gaudi left us a one to 25 scale model.
A few years before his death,
Gaudi made a model of the sacristy
that he considered satisfactory.
A century later, it would become essential
to finalizing the work on the Sagrada Familia.
Gaudi conceived the Sacristy's dome,
which would be the model for the central towers,
as a set of 12 paraboloids that come together in one point.
The paraboloid is a shape
that no one had ever used before in architecture.
We modified the three measurements in the sacristy
to design the central towers.
Its diameter, the number of sides and then the height,
according to the dimensions
that Gaudi had defined in his sketches.
The comparison works
and allows architects to begin modeling the large towers.
New and strange shapes begin to cover computer screens.
They force the contractors
to completely change their way of building.
They need to adapt to the very unique design
Gaudi conceived a century earlier,
and to accelerate the tower assembly.
We're finishing the top of the tower,
which will be crowned with a large star
made of glass and steel.
The whole organization is focused on this challenge,
which is one of the most important in recent years.
Before placing the ultimate jewel,
the top of the Virgin Mary's tower
is covered with colorful mosaic tile.
A decorative technique that Gaudi used abundantly
in many of his creations.
Nonetheless, for his Basilica,
Gaudi decided to use it sparingly.
Mosaic colors are reserved for the tops.
This burst of mosaics
will be what sailors first see as they near Barcelona.
What a radiant welcome.
Completely devoted to his masterpiece,
at the end of his life Gaudi's mood darkened,
and he closed himself off.
He rarely left his workshop as it had a bed.
Most of his friends were dead,
including the sculptor Matamala.
Little by little, Gaudi became consumed by mysticism.
On June 7th, 1926, like every other day,
he walked to the San Felipe Neri Church to confess.
But unfortunately two blocks down, he crosses the road.
One of the trams doesn't stop and runs him over.
Gaudi of course, by this time was incredibly ascetic.
He had hollowed out cheeks and he looked actually,
more like a tramp than anything else.
And two taxis stopped, looked at him
and refused to take him on.
And then somebody actually did help him
and got him to hospital.
When he was finally identified several days later,
it was too late.
A brain hemorrhage had taken his life at the age of 74.
His burial was like a state funeral in Catalonia,
the sheer size of his funeral procession
attested to his fame.
He was finally recognized by all levels of society.
Papal permission to bury him in Sagrada Familia's crypt
was easily obtained.
The Sagrada Familia will no doubt soon finish
its slow and spectacular growth.
But it promises to challenge its builders
until the very end.
Gaudi imagined placing a giant lighted star
atop the tower of the Virgin Mary, that's 138 meters high.
And finally here she is, illuminated just as Gaudi wished.
In a few years, the central Jesus Christ tower
will rise above it.
At night, the entire building will be majestic,
just as Gaudi imagined it.
At the top, we'll place spotlights
that will radiate just like the sun
gives off natural light from the sky.
At night, and on religious holidays,
the spotlights will lavishly illuminate the temple
and will be the city's most beautiful adornment.
The Sagrada Familia has taken time,
The time of cathedrals,
to transform the fantastic vision of its creator
into a collective achievement.
The nine towers plus the Facade of Glory
should be completed in the coming years.
If Gaudi could see his completed masterpiece
in the near future,
he would most certainly not feel betrayed,
but rather satisfied to have been the driving vision
of such a creation for over 100 years.