Barcelona's Sagrada Familia: Gaudí's monument to nature

He became one of the most famous Modernist architects- responsible for Barcelona's most famous monuments-, but Antoni Gaudí wasn't aiming to be avant-garde. "To be original," he claimed, "is to return to the origin". For Gaudí the origin was nature.

Today, his Sagrada Família temple in Barcelona is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of Spain's most visited places. And nature is everywhere: not just an inside that feels like a concrete forest- complete with trees, branches and leaves that conceal windows to the sky-, but in his replication of the geometries of nature.

Jordi Cussó i Anglés spent decades studying Gaudí's work as head of the Sagrada Família's modeling workshop and searching for what secrets he pulled from nature. In his book Gaudí's Sagrada Família: a Monument to Nature, he explains some of his findings, such as, how the famous architect's study of an oleander plant helped lead to his discovery of a new column (the double twisted column).

In this video, we talk to Cussó and to Jordi Bonet, chief architect of the temple and son of a Gaudí collaborator about nature as a source of inspiration.