Susan posted a lovely overview of our trip to Barcelona and falling in love with Gaudí’s architecture.  I don’t have a huge amount of text to add on this — she’s said a lot of what I felt as well.  But I wanted to point out some architectural details that caught my fancy and that Susan hasn’t already reported.  So this is mostly pictures.  Just stuff that randomly intrigued me — don’t expect any rhyme or reason.

Magic square in stonework at Sagrada Familia

I’m not sure why there was a magic square carved into the stonework in the “Passion” facade of the Sagrada Família, but the math geek in me couldn’t resist a photo of it.

The full context for the magic square

Here you can see the full context of the magic square.  Note also the strange cubist renditions of Important Catholic Figures.

Detail of quadric surfaces in the interior of the Sagrada Família

Apparently, Gaudí was completely batty about quadrics — surfaces constructed from conic sections or general quadratic functions in 3-d.  He seemed to think of them in terms of constructions with cones and straight lines rotated about a plane, though.  In any case, when you begin looking, these guys are littered all over the place in his architecture.  Here we see some details from the Sagrada Família: ellipses (on the capital of the column and in the cross-section of the windows) and hyperboloids of one sheet (technically, half-hyperboloids — in the ceiling vaults and surrounding the windows).

Exterior detail of hyperboloid window frame with elliptical cross-section.

A detail of the same effect, seen from outside the temple.  This is one of the elliptical windows that’s admitting light in the previous photo.  It’s a little hard to tell from these photos, but the frame is a hyperboloid of one sheet, with half the structure inside the temple and half outside.  A math geek’s wet dream in architecture.

Detail of street tiles outside the Casa Battló

A detail shot of the street tiles in front of the Casa Battló.  I don’t know if Gaudí designed these himself or not, but they’re certainly in his style — biological and sea-form inspiration.

Staircase and railing inside Casa Battló.

A view of the central staircase in Casa Battló.  The sea-forms are evident here again, and the whole staircase is reminiscent of the spine of an eel or something.  The whole thing is excruciatingly detailed and Gaudí apparently micro-managed the whole affair, down to specifying different types of woods for the surface of the steps versus the leading edge of each step.  The handrail is not simply round — it’s an odd, hard to describe shape that happens to fit almost exactly into the palm of your hand.  Ergonomics in action.  I totally want a house in which I can have this staircase.

Central atrium in Casa Battló

This was one of the cleverest elements of the house, I thought.  The main stair winds around a central atrium, or mini-courtyard, that pierces from the roof down to the ground floor of the house.  The atrium is topped by a great skylight, and almost every room has a window onto the atrium to admit natural light.  But the really neat bit was his handling of light.  You see, the tilework (that helps reflect the light) is actually differentially colored.  At the bottom, the tiles are white and very pale blue — almost a blue tinted off-white.  But they get darker as they go up the atrium, so that at the top, they’re almost sea-blue.  The coolness is that the colors were chosen very precisely to present a uniform luminance.  That is, because the light is more intense at the top, the tiles are darker there, so that they reflect about the same amount of light as the paler tiles at the bottom, where there’s less light to reflect.  The subjective result is that it appears to be uniformly lit for the entire height.  That’s why it looks all the same color from this photo.  You can’t tell that the tiles change color fairly dramatically as you go up the atrium from this shot alone.  We couldn’t tell until we got to the top and could see the darker tiles up close.  Then we could see that they were, in fact, much darker than the ones at the bottom.  Unfortunately, we didn’t think to get a photo at the top.  :-(

Rear facade of Casa Battló

A shot of the rear facade of the Casa Battlo, standing in the ornate courtyard.  You can see that this bizarrely beautiful building is just sandwiched in between much more functional Barcelona buildings.  You can also see some of the curves of the building and the ornate ironwork.

A detail shot on some of the ironwork in the rear courtyard

I can’t figure out if this ironwork fringe on the fences was supposed to be grass, claws, or simply some abstraction.  From this angle, they look like something from Mordor; from other angles they look more organic.  More on ironwork later.

Parabolic arches in the attic of Casa Battló

Did I mention that Gaudí was crazy for conics?  Here are parabolic arches in a hallway in the attic.  (Although the audio guide narration kept confusing parabolas and cateneries.)  The really beautiful thing about this design, though, aside from the structural properties of the arches, is the baffling on the right, which lightens the corridor and provides airflow, yet is overhung to prevent rain from getting in.  Traditionally, these kinds of attics are stuffy, damp, musty, and dark.  This design can only work in a fairly warm, dry clime — Mediterranean, if you will.  But it’s a lovely solution for this space.

Chimneys of Casa Battló

Chimney development of Casa Battló.  The chimneys are pulled together into central locations, keeping the majority of the roof space clear (rather than having pipes poking up in random places).  The tops are baffled to prevent water and drastic drafts in, while allowing smoke out.  And, of course, being Gaudí, it’s all tiled and decorated.  (With heat-resistant glass tile.)  I have to wonder if pulling the chimneys together introduces kinks in the chimney flues that might be subject to clogging or be hard to clean.

A detail of the cross surmounting the Casa Milà

On to Casa Milà.  A detail of the cross on the roof.  Among his other passions, Gaudí was passionately Catholic, and he littered all his designs with crosses, albeit interesting ones.  Sorry about the tree — it was the best shot we could get.

Curved decks and window wells at Casa Milà

The curves of this building really caught my eye.  The facade is all worked stone and iron, yet it comes out organic and fluid, without being (totally) ostentatious.

Detail of ironwork balconies at Casa Milà

More organic ironwork.  Hard to believe that’s really iron.  Some poor ironworker must have been driven to the brink of sanity trying to get this effect.