Inside the Making of the Sagrada Família, Barcelona’s 144-Year Megaproject

To get a sense of Sagra­da Famíli­a’s pop­u­lar­i­ty with YouTu­bers, you have only to take a look at the relat­ed Open Cul­ture posts linked below. As will hard­ly escape your atten­tion, most sub­jects that con­sis­tent­ly draw the atten­tion of the GoPro class are not nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Catholic church­es. But Antoni Gaudí’s mas­ter­piece, whose con­struc­tion alone has sur­vived him by a cen­tu­ry now, tran­scends many bound­aries of intel­lec­tu­al and cul­tur­al inter­est: his­to­ry chan­nels fea­ture it, trav­el chan­nels fea­ture it, reli­gious chan­nels fea­ture it, and, of course, archi­tec­ture chan­nels fea­ture it. Most recent­ly, Sagra­da Família has appeared on The B1M, which is all about con­struc­tion — the more ambi­tious, the bet­ter.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed B1M videos on the Flat­iron Build­ing, the Guggen­heim Muse­um Bil­bao, the extrater­res­tri­al­ly curv­ing work of Zaha Hadid, and every gen­er­a­tion of New York sky­scraper. That selec­tion only hints at the range of struc­tures to which the chan­nel’s cre­ator Fred Mills has paid close atten­tion, and yet it’s Sagra­da Família that puts him at a loss. “There’s parts of this build­ing where you can’t help but describe what you’re see­ing,” he says as he stands in its stained glass-illu­mi­nat­ed cen­tral nave. “There’s oth­er moments where you don’t have the words; it’s just emo­tion.” Enter­ing it feels, as he describes it, “less like you’re stand­ing inside a build­ing, and more like you’ve been trans­port­ed to the thresh­old of heav­en itself.”

How does Sagra­da Família cre­ate this expe­ri­ence for its vis­i­tors, even in its incom­plete state? Some will cred­it divine inspi­ra­tion; oth­ers, Gaudí’s sheer archi­tec­tur­al genius. Mills seeks out more con­crete forms of expla­na­tion, right down to the very blocks of stone used to build its tow­ers. Grant­ed much more access than ordi­nary tourists, who now come at a rate of about 1,500 per hour, he goes all the way up to see the mas­sive cross assem­bled on the church’s pin­na­cle, and all the way down to the base­ment work­shop where intri­cate mod­els test the myr­i­ad pos­si­ble ways to real­ize Gaudí’s vision. For when he died in 1926, hav­ing been hit by a tram, the plans he left behind did­n’t exact­ly explain all the details about how to fin­ish what resem­bled no oth­er build­ing ever erect­ed, reli­gious or oth­er­wise.

As Mills points out, sub­se­quent­ly devel­oped tech­nolo­gies have helped keep Sagra­da Famíli­a’s now 144-year-long con­struc­tion pro­ceed­ing apace. And though great cel­e­bra­tion attend­ed the top­ping-out of its cen­tral tow­er high above the streets of Barcelona this past Feb­ru­ary, more work remains to be done. Com­plet­ing its inte­ri­or, roofs, and side chapels, as well as the grand façade with its main entrance, should take anoth­er decade, depend­ing on how the rel­e­vant dis­putes involv­ing local res­i­dents and the city coun­cil play out. Still, it seems like­ly indeed that Sagra­da Família will final­ly be fin­ished with­in our life­times, which makes for the kind of dra­ma that will keep attract­ing both large- and small-time doc­u­men­tar­i­ans. “I’m not sure we’re ever going to see any­thing else quite like it,” Mills says, which hints at anoth­er rea­son for all the con­tent-cre­ator fas­ci­na­tion: though it may well be com­plet­ed in our age, Sagra­da Família could hard­ly be less of our age.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of Sagra­da Família, Antoni Gaudí’s Auda­cious Church That’s Been Under Con­struc­tion for 142 Years

The Incred­i­ble Engi­neer­ing of Anto­nio Gaudí’s Sagra­da Famil­ia, the 137 Year Con­struc­tion Project

The Japan­ese Sculp­tor Who Ded­i­cat­ed His Life to Fin­ish­ing Gaudí’s Mag­num Opus, the Sagra­da Família

The Longest Con­struc­tion Projects in His­to­ry: Why Sagra­da Família, the Milan Duo­mo, Greek Tem­ples & Oth­er Famous Struc­tures Took Gen­er­a­tions to Com­plete

How Design­ing Build­ings Upside-Down Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture, Mak­ing Pos­si­ble St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, Sagra­da Família & More

LEGO Lets You Build Gaudí’s Sagra­da Família in Its Largest Set Ever

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.