1900-1914
Presented by Fernando Bales
The park was an attempt to create a community for the bourgeoise elite in a overly crowded city. Eusebi Guell being Gaudi’s patron chose the site for its distance from the heart of Barca, and its commanding view of the sea, the city, and the sky. Guell described the project like this..."it has been designed as a park, in which the avenues, roads and linking paths will serve as thoroughfares, and in which the houses will be scattered around, each one detached from its neighbours and surrounded by a garden, and with its own avenues and roads. Its name will be Park Guell." -1904. The initial idea was to sub divide the 37 acre estate into 60 smaller triangular-shaped plots. Only two houses were ever built out of the 60 that Gaudi had envisioned. Upon entering the park from the main gate one is fronted with 86 Doric columns that create the open air piazza above, and the outdoormarket space beneath. Below the market a cistern sits where water is collected. Moving through the park one encounters covered walkways, constructed from stone, held up by columns embodied with refrences to palm trees, coral, crustaceans, even bodily limbs. The sea is evident here, how the piazza opens up to the sky like a wave washing up on shore. This is a masterpiece in the fusion of the land with the built form.