Gaudi unseen

On Tuesday I joined to christmas celebration of the association of women in real estate. As last year we got a guided tour through one of the exhibitions of the german museum of architecture located in Frankfurt - this time it was a exhibition about Gaudi, a famous spanish architect and creator of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which construction started around 1870 and is still unfinished.  His style is unique and very interesting.
After his sudden death due to an accident with a tram (in 1925) they recently managed to reveal the way he constructed this impressive dome by adapting software of parametric design (usually used to construct airplanes) because he used mainly 3D-shaped for the construction of the church. such as hyperboloids (a sandglass),



hyperbolic paraboloids,



conoids ( Paraboloid of revolution)


and helicoids.



Therefore he used to work with gypsum models instead using 2D- construction - far ahaed for his era.

If this sounds like "WHAT  The xxx?" to you it did sound the same to me .

But the results are just incredible (he resolved the problems of the gothic style which always needed some sideward support as you can see on many churches) as you can see at this modell (1:25):











I think the way he constructs comes very close to what the poeple today call bionics...

I also took some pics of examples from the church:







I think he was an incredible architect and engineer!

When I visited the church in the late 80s during a summer holiday in Spain there was not much going on at the construction site but now the roof is almost closed (finished in 2010) so for me the title of the exhibition "Gaudi unseen" machted.

Oh, not to forget, afterwards we went for dinner at an italian restaurant called "Paolo's". The food was delicious but also very expensive - luckily it was paid by the association. It was nice to meet some of the members again and we had some pleasant conversations. Unfortunately I had to leave around 10 p.m. just to catch the train and miss some more conversations .

Alltogether this was a very pleasant evening which I enjoyed very much.