Gawdy Gaudi designs in Park Güell

16/11/2013

Park Güell, Barcelona

Gaudi lived out his final days in a magnificent house or Casa, overlooking the park. (Not his own design) Güell purchased the park and intended a housing estate for wealthy patrons, but this ambition was never realised. He did leave the design of the monumental staircase and water collection system for the estate to Gaudi, along with the gatekeeper's lodgings.

Antoni Gaudi's designs went beyond extending the known boundaries of architecture, building practical solutions such as water collection, into the fantastic monumental seating and viewing platform, with the water cascading through enormous supporting pillars, some set out at a jaunty angle to the whole. 

He seemed to draw upon nature, with sinuous forms wherever previously straight lines dominated.

His viaduct and walkway built from rock seems to copy the lines from a dinosaur, and the seating plan appears to writhe snake-like along the edge of the viewing platform. 

It allows for couples or groups to sit in a cosy privacy, as the turns somehow create compartments, 

as well as practically funnellling water outwards into a gutter with dogs as gargoyle drains.

Going down towards the freakish pair of houses, one is reminded of patchwork quilting in the broken tile pattern on the roof, and a wonky witches hat. 

And yet the houses are meant to be practical, being the porter’s or gate-keeper’s lodging.

The giant lizard and the bear jut out from their leafy bases, and water cascades from their open mouths.

If the entire monumental zone had been built for a film set, it would have been futuristic, and magical, and would have been torn down within a season of film-making. Yet somehow Gaudi got all this past the Barcelona town planners, and it survives.

Our journey to the park on motorcycle was guided by the kindly satnav lady, on a miraculous journey up the hill, and being guided downwards again completed the magical feel for the day.

It rained before we went, and it rained some more when we got back. Nobody consulted their maps at the park, and there were no guides with microphones and no Disney music soundtrack.

It was gawdy and magical.