A Glimpse of Moderniste Barcelona
Barcelona has a couple of buildings like that; for example, the Palau de la Generalitat. It's boring, so I haven't pictured it. On the other hand, the courthouse, intended as no more than an imposing government building, is more interesting.
Bulking up above the rectangular pile of stones are four oddly-shaped towers, with roof friezes and iron ornaments that manage to incorporate lightness without diminishing the building's authority.
Our short stay here didn't allow for a real look at Barcelona's architectural gems. I can see spending a month next time we visit, just to study the buildings.
Not truly Moderniste, this lighthouse surmounting a mansion in Passeig de Gràcia suggests the playfulness to come.
Taking the concept of lighthouse towers with tall thin ornaments to full development is Casa Terrades...
... informally known as Casa de les Punxes (the points, in Catalan).
With Casa Lleó Morera, the architect managed to break free of straight lines, of simple Euclidean solids. Now things are beginning to curve.
The dome appears to be a form called a truncated ellipsoid. (This is a really interesting notion to us geeky engineers.) The dome has been covered in tiles, and from the look of them, they're not square tiles.
Sadly, the Rotonda is decaying, but you can bet it will be saved. Barcelona is putting tremendous resources into preservation and restoration of its buildings.
Wonderful forms and colors crop up in small ways as well as large.
The most famous of the Moderniste architects is Antoni Gaudí. Casa Batlló below, is one of his designs.
Surreal curves, reminiscent of Salvador Dalí's melting watches, complete the breakaway from any kind of convention; yes, it has floors, doors and windows. But it's all distorted: comprehensible, yes; normal, no.
That's Casa Amatller to the left, designed by the first Modernist architect, Josep Puig i Cadafalch.
Some kind of spirit was alive in Barcelona at the turn of the last century. An artistic explosion occurred in which creativity broke free of convention. The energy still present in these buildings resonates with me, an engineer who participated in the startup and flowering of Silicon Valley. I see in Barcelona the same freedom to imagine, to create and accomplish that I enjoyed, working with a bunch of guys that created the Information Age.
Barcelona remains a vibrant design center. Modern buildings sustain the spirit of the Moderniste movement.
This could have been just another ugly cube. But just look at what the tiles have done to it! Another free-thinking architect, another risk-taking client.