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The Sagrada Família in Barcelona is the basilica Antoni Gaudí worked on from 1883 until his death in 1926, and it is still being built. Its tree-like columns and forms taken from nature are his, and the Nativity façade and crypt completed in his lifetime are on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

Sagrada Familia

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Gaudí took over the project in 1883 from the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar and turned a conventional neo-Gothic church into something new. For an earlier church he had studied arches with hanging chains: a chain hung from two points sags into a natural curve, and turned upside down that curve gives the shape in which a stone arch carries its load purely by compression. He also used ruled surfaces, curved shapes such as hyperboloids that can be built entirely from straight lines, which made complex stonework easier to cut. As an 'expiatory' church, built as an act of atonement, it is paid for by donations and today largely by visitors' tickets, one reason it has taken so long. Pope Benedict XVI consecrated it as a basilica in 2010. Gaudí is buried in its crypt.

Türkçe oku
Barselona'daki Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí'nin 1883'ten 1926'daki ölümüne kadar üzerinde çalıştığı bazilikadır ve yapımı hâlâ sürüyor. Ağaç gibi dallanan sütunları ve doğadan alınmış biçimleri Gaudí'nindir; onun sağlığında tamamlanan Doğuş cephesi ve kripta (yeraltı kilisesi) UNESCO Dünya Mirası Listesi'nde yer alır.

Gaudí projeyi 1883'te mimar Francisco de Paula del Villar'dan devraldı ve sıradan bir neo-Gotik kiliseyi bambaşka bir yapıya dönüştürdü. Daha önceki bir kilise için kemerleri asılı zincirlerle incelemişti: iki ucundan asılan bir zincir kendiliğinden bir eğri çizer; bu eğri ters çevrildiğinde, taş bir kemerin yükü yalnızca basınçla taşıdığı biçim ortaya çıkar. Hiperboloit gibi, kavisli görünse de tamamen düz çizgilerle kurulabilen regle yüzeyleri de kullandı; bu, karmaşık taşların kesilmesini kolaylaştırdı. Günahların kefareti için yapılan bir “kefaret kilisesi” olduğundan bağışlarla, bugün de büyük ölçüde ziyaretçi biletleriyle finanse ediliyor; yapımın bu kadar uzun sürmesinin bir nedeni de bu. Papa XVI. Benediktus 2010'da yapıyı bazilika olarak kutsadı. Gaudí, bazilikanın kriptasında gömülüdür.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Sagrada Família
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