Barcelona < Spain < Europe


Travel Blog by intotheflame, , for everyone

Belongs to your "Eurotrip summer 06" journey.

Barcelona's bizarre buildings: Gaudi and the Owl

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Intotheflame's travel blog in Barcelona, Spain. She went on 10 of July 2006 for 4 days. She went for tourism, culture. Intotheflame went with a group of friends. She got there and around by walking, train. intotheflame's travel verdict is: recommended.

A Catalonia Owl

A Catalonia Owl

This is the kind of thing that's normal after a few days in Barcelona.

Where Diagonal Avenue meets Passeig de Sant Joan you will find the Rotulos Roura Company building from the top of which this wonderfully weird 2D creature peers down. Apparently, it used to be a luminous advert for the company which develops and installs neon lighting. It used to emit hypnotising circled of light from its eyes, but since 2003 that's been stopped - probably cos they found themselves with a bunch of pedestrian zombies standing outside the office every morning having been hypnotised the manic-eye-owl during the night...

Barcelona is like a museum; the buldings and districts of the city are works of art, purposefully exhibited in the public eye - and mostly for free!

Of course, Barcelona has been home to many famous (particularly modern) artists over the decades: Picasso, Joan Miro, and of course, Gaudi (to name a few).

Gaudi's works lie scattered all over the city, monumental reminders of the arcitect who pioneered a surreal and highly aesthetic artistic style. Not far from the hypno owl is the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished religious masterpiece.

Front entrance facade of the Sagrada Familia

Front entrance facade of the Sagrada Familia

As you can see, cranes feature heavily in the composition of this work of art, but contrary to what you ight expect of a surrealist, they are not meant to be there. The rather frustrating and visually "interesting" fact about the Sagrada is that despite the first stone being laid in 1882, the project has still got a long way to go due to insufficient funding in the 1930's and a workshop fire that burned all of Gaudi's models in 1936, during the peak of the Spanish civil war. These set-backs meant a severe loss of time, but the church is slowing making its way towards completion. This turbulent history in itself makes the site interesting.

The second of Gaudi's monuments that we visited was the Casa Batllo. Enroute, however, we came across some awesome graffiti:

This is a city where even graffiti is acknowledged as art, and there are spaces designated by the city to street artists. For more on this visit http://www.bcngraffiti.com/

The Casa Batllo is like something out of a dream, or a surrealist painting. I didn't think architecture could be so FUN until I was confronted with the swirly house-front on Passeig de Gràcia.

Casa Batllo

Casa Batllo

Inside the Casa Batllo are several floors of private apartments and a few floors dedicated to public viewing. I don't know who lives there if anyone, but they are living in my dream house! Every detail challenged the ordinary, every surface, the concept of each room, the shape of a lamp or the ingenious ways Gaudi found of creating light effects was just original genuis. But that is a story in its self...see http://hereorthere.com/members/into...perience/793

Traversing the city we came across another of Gaudi's houses on Provença, famous for the ghost/soldier/man-like sculptures that stare down from the curved sandy roof: La Pedrera. It's intricate metal blaconies look like intertwined leaves, and their delicacy contrasts starkly with the smooth sand-like mass of the building and sculptures.

La Pedrera

La Pedrera

Another of Barcelona's crazy buildings is the following...sadly I can't remember what it's called but I know its an art gallery :S

Weird barbed-wire building

Weird barbed-wire building

Lastly, another animal-influenced structure is the Barcelona Fish which towers over topless sun-bathers on the Barcelona beach boardwalk, designed by Frank O. Gerhy. The headless-tailless fish could represent a number of things...in my mind it was good and ready to eat.

Fish

Fish

A few of the miscellaneous things we saw are below. This city blew me away because it was like walking through a series of Dali paintings (and his museam is another building worth seeing). Down one street, we saw an entire facade of a uilding held up by scaffolding while the rest of it had been demolished...it stood like a 2D drawing in a very real 3D street.
Down another street we saw a random patch of tiles adoring the plain pavement, for no apparent reason.

I'd recommend Barcelona for its exterior alone; it is a living museum and the extra the art, culture, music and amazing food are a tremedous bonus. Even bike theft in this city is artistic!

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