Photographing Heritage Part IV: Gaudi Crypt

Last month we featured the Must-See Architecture in Barcelona and hopefully, its got you packing your bags for Catalan’s capital of culture. To spice things up a bit, we’re going to take you on a 4-part series by Spanish photographer David Cardelús highlighting some of the most beautiful heritage buildings in Spain.

For Part IV we’re exploring the Gaudi Crypt, the iconic workshop where his dreams came to life, and where new ideas were tested.

The following text is provided to us by David Cardelús.  New photographs of the Gaudi Crypt have been shot to portray the UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of Gaudi’s less known works but one that really condenses all the architectural innovations and the genius of the Catalan architect.

Twenty minutes far from Barcelona by train, the Gaudi Crypt is one of the buildings that form the Colonia Güell. It is considered by many as a singular workshop or laboratory where Gaudi practiced the soultions that he later applied to the construction of the Sagrada Familia, a place where –in the words of Japanese architect Arata Isozaki– he “overcame all established limits regarding shapes”.

On assignment from the Colonia Güell managing company, the photographs of the Crypt explore its relationship with his environment and how the different colors of the surrounding vegetation have been used on the construction materials of the building.

The interior photographs try to interpret the beauty of the different shapes that constitute Gaudi’s architectural solutions in leaning pillars, catenary arches and hyperbolic paraboloid walls and, more decisively, the incredibly intricate masonry work of the Crypt’s brick roof.

Photographing Gaudi’s works is always a transforming experience for any architectural photographer, a statement specially true when your camera is framing a purely aesthetic feast for the eyes that can be seen as nothing but a monumental planting seed of the Sagrada Familia.

There are many other Gaudi’s works, large and small, and I do really wish there will be more new exciting opportunities to photograph them.