who passed it on to the Romans. Arches in ancient architecture were basically semicircular, or else were segmental, elliptical or basket arches.
In Nature, when an arch forms spontaneous – on a mountain eroded by the wind, or due to rocks falls – it is never semicircular nor any other shape drawn by architects using a compass.
Natural arches are appreciably parabolic or catenary. Strangely enough, the catenary arch, which follows the curve formed by a chain suspended freely from two points, but inverted, and possesses excellent mechanical properties that were already known by the end of the seventeenth century, was scarcely ever used by architects, who considered it ugly, influenced as they were by long centuries of architectural tradition that had accustomed them to shapes drawn with a compass.
Gaudí on the other hand, thought that if this arch was the most mechanically perfect and was the one produced spontaneously by Nature, then it must be the most beautiful because it was the most simple and functional. Simple as regards its natural formation, but not when drawn with architectonic instruments.
In the stables at the Finca Güell (1884), the waterfall in the garden of the Casa Vicens (1883), in the blanching room at La Obrera Mataronense (1883), Gaudí used this type of arch with confidence and with supreme elegance, and he continued to employ it in his more modern buildings such as Bellesguard (1900), the Casa Batlló (1904) and La Pedrera (1906). With regard to solid geometry, he noticed the frequent occurrence in Nature of ruled warped surfaces – that is to say, curved surfaces generated solely by straight lines.
All natural forms of a fibrous composition, such as a cane, a bone or the tendons of muscles, will, when they are twisted or warped and the fibres remain straight, produce so-called ruled warped surfaces. A bundle of sticks dropped on the floor will form these warped surfaces, and the tents of the North American Indians are built of poles covered with skins which form ruled warped surfaces.
It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that these warped surfaces were studied geometrically (mainly by Gaspard Monge), and it was then that they were given the complicated names of helicoids, hyperbolic paraboloids, hyperboloids and conoids. The names are difficult, but the geometric forms are very easy to understand and to produce.
A hyperbolic paraboloid is formed by two straight lines, in different planes, with a third line sliding continuously along them, thus generating a curved figure in space which is formed entirely of straight lines.
Hyperbolic paraboloids can be found in mountain passes, between the fingers of one’s hand, etc. The Indian wigwam referred to earlier is a hyperboloid, as is the human femur. The shoots on the stalk of a plant grow helicoidally, and the bark of eucalyptus trees is helicoidal.
Geometry generated by straight lines can be found in all the kingdoms of Nature (animal, vegetable and mineral) and it produces forms that are structurally perfect.
Gaudí noticed something else. In Catalonia, a system of construction that has long been and still is frequently used is one that consists in laying slim bricks so that only the largest face is visible (the bricks in each course being laid end to end). This process, using plaster, lime mortar or cement for the joints and forming surfaces one or two layers thick, is employed for floors, partitions or walls and also for vaults, which are warped surfaces in space and are known in Catalan as voltes de maó de pla. To construct these, bricklayers generally use flexible wooden battents, although sometimes they simply make do with two rules and a string, and the results can be seen in lofty staircases and ceilings.
Gaudí thought that if one started with two rules on different planes and built the various courses of the vault following the string running from rule to rule, one would obtain a perfect hyperbolic paraboloid. He thus found, in this traditional Catalan method of construction, the opportunity to produce ruled warped forms very similar to those encountered in Nature, pleasing to the eye and with excellent load-bearing capacities.
He achieved the same shining curved forms that his father had produced by beating cooper in his workshop – except that Gaudí used bricks laid in straight lines and then covered them with chips of tiles (trencadís, in Catalan) to give a shiny, iridescent effect.
His architecture was conceived in the coppersmith’s workshop, the result of his ingenuous but intelligent observation of the ruled warped surfaces of Nature and of the delightfully simple Catalan technique of building shallow vaults. It has nothing in common with the elaborate and repetitive architecture of history, rooted as it is in Euclidean geometry.
The architecture of architects came to a standstill when it began to be studied from the historical point of view. The history of architecture led to historicism, and things became even more complicated with the advent of the study of treatises on architecture. All this has produced a science of science, overloading architecture with theories and philosophical concepts that end by taking it further and further from reality.
Gaudí started to play the game of architecture from scratch; he changed the current geometry by replacing cubes, spheres and prisms with hyperboloids, helicoids and conoids, decorating them with natural features such as flowers, water or rocks. He changed the basis of architecture – which is geometry – and thus completely changed the state of the art.
The result was spectacular, but although admired by many it was little understood by the majority. This is why his style of architecture has been described as confused, chaotic, surrealist or degenerate. Those who think or say this are unaware that Gaudí’s architecture is based on the geometry of Nature and on traditional methods of construction.
It is clear that Gaudí used forms that had never been seen in building before, and that he never repeated any of the immense variety of features that made up his repertory; but the surprising thing is that he achieved all this by means of the most ordinary and traditional methods of construction.
He never made use of modern building inventions, or reinforced concrete, or huge steel structures, or even new materials. With these new materials it is, to some extent, obvious that new forms can be achieved, but to produce something new with old-fashioned techniques is a sign of brilliance.
This architecture that is seemingly complicated but is in fact as simple as Nature, the master of logic, arose from the hands of Gaudí like a sculpture formed of ruled warped surfaces, structurally perfect but at the same time markedly organic, alive and pulsating.
Anyone who has visited the chapel at the Colònia Güell in Santa Coloma de Cervelló (1908–15) will have felt himself inside a living, breathing structure that produces a sensation of muscular tension, with walls like a skin that must surely be warm, as if the blood coursed strongly beneath it.
Gaudí, who was brought up in the Camp de Tarragona and whose buildings are located mainly in Barcelona, expressed his Mediterranean and Catalan spirit by showing the world that there is another way, another geometry, that can produce an architecture more in tune with Nature.
It is an architecture that is logical, clear and as transparent as the light in the Alt Camp; an architecture that is not abstract but very concrete, that invents nothing but rather goes back to origins, as he once explained in his famous phrase: “Originality means returning to the origin of things.”
Gaudí not only saw these origins in the natural things of this world, but he also embellished and idealised them with religious feeling derived from the simple precept of St. Francis of Assisi, who loved Nature because it was the work of the Creator.
Perspectives on the Life of Antoni Gaudí
