Towering tree of God

In his biography of Gaudí, published in 2001, Gijs van Hensbergen opined that ‘we should never try to finish the Sagrada Família, otherwise we undo the web of power that is elaborately woven into this mysterious religious spell’. But he now appears to take the view that it should, and will, be finished by 2026, the centenary of Gaudí’s death (though the sculpted decoration will take considerably longer to complete). If indeed this extraordinary building is ‘topped out’ in nine years’ time, it will have taken 144 years to build, which is a good deal less than many medieval cathedrals (Toledo’s took more than 250 years). Gaudí famously said, ‘My client is not in a hurry,’ but after the Sagrada Família was consecrated and proclaimed a basilica by His representative on earth in 2010, it was reasonable to infer that those responsible were being encouraged to get on with it.

Gaudí was appointed architect of the Sagrada Família in 1883, 18 months after the first stone was laid. He inherited a neo-Gothic design for the crypt, which he took six years to finish, before embarking on his revolutionary ideas for the church above. He planned it, in van Hensbergen’s words, ‘not just as an intermediary between heaven and earth but also as a battlefield of the senses’.

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As a child growing up on the Catalan coast, Gaudí’s fascination with the shapes of shellfish, the pebbles on the shore, the branches of trees, the light on a spider’s web, would inform his architectural development and his rejection of straight lines. Allied to his reverence for nature and the power of light, Gaudí used a design technique which dispensed with the flying buttresses of traditional Gothic churches in order to give more of an impression of heavenly space.