142 years
The Sagrada Família completed its final height in Barcelona yesterday. The upper arm of the cross atop the central tower was lifted into place, bringing its total height to 566 feet, the tallest structure in Barcelona.
©Basílica de la Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, España
Also, coincidentally, it's happening 100 years after architect Antoni Gaudí's 1926 death, and 142 years after it started.
I visited Barcelona in 2014 and walked around the exterior of this magic building, but I wasn't able to go inside. It's a building that is not immediately understood. Every side of it is different and equally interesting. You need to wander around to experience it all. I'm hoping to go this year at some point to document the completion.
view of the interior via www.sagradafamilia.org
I do remember walking up to Gaudí's Casa Batlló when I was there, my mouth falling open. I had never seen anything else like this and probably won't ever again.
the picture I snapped on my iPhone 5
Gaudí had a mammoth dose of singular, perhaps divine creativity poured into one human vessel, and he was in the right place at the right time and went extremely hard.
I never knew this, but learned that he actually planned a skyscraper in NYC. It was supposed to look like this.
The man was clearly not afraid to stand out.
He was commissioned in 1908 to create the Hotel Attraction, a massive skyscraper hotel for Lower Manhattan by two anonymous businessmen.
A 360-meter-tall organic structure with a star-topped central tower, biomorphic forms, reinforced concrete, and catenary arches, functioning as a "vertical city" with hotels, restaurants, theaters, museums, and a panoramic observation deck.
It was abandoned due to his illness and focus on Sagrada Família, surviving only as sketches rediscovered in the 1950s.
What could have been!
It's a very weird time to be alive.
So much rapid technological change, with the internet & AI, but in many ways the built world looks the same as it did in the 1970s: glass and steel rectangles keep going up in every major city in every part of the world.
I increasingly find myself looking to the past for inspiration. I've been working on a couple of product collaborations and am trying to develop a clear aesthetic.
Everything that feels fresh is 70-100 years old. That's what gives me energy. Not so much new stuff.
Chandelier by Gio Ponti. How about the color of that glass?
For the physical world, we seem to be in an era of stagnation. Beauty, real intricate craftsmanship, things with a lot of personality feel over the top.
"Slop" would be the term I would use for a vast majority of new homes, buildings, and furniture.
Ever notice that buildings designed on a computer often look like they were designed on a computer?
From my purview, the areas where creativity and capital are flowing are food, media, finance, gambling, cosmetics, and tech. That's where the energy is.
Notice that all of those are engineered for extremely rapid consumption. Addiction would probably be a better word.
That's the trade we made.
Gaudí to me is the end of an era. He goes out as the top dog, creating a spectacular and standalone architectural statement that combined his talents with capital and the values of his community. It's him doing the hardest and greatest thing he possibly could.
The tallest and most extravagant building in the maybe the most beautiful city in the world.
Today, our buildings mostly suck.
But we do build a lot of apps, we have crazy good food, and our skincare company valuations could build the Sagrada Família several times over.
This week, I read a Will Manidis piece called "Against Taste" that gets at this. He argues we've replaced patronage - the intimate collaboration between capital, labor, and the divine that built cathedrals - with just individual taste, which has turned everything into transactional consumption.
That said, I don't think the world has ever been hungrier for transcendent beauty and things that last - it's an increasingly scarce resource.
There's arguably never been a better time to build something that lasts, that makes a bold, singular statement.
Maybe you will?
