Objectiu Sagrada Família: Tocar el cel

Objectiu Sagrada Família: Tocar el cel

[Music]
After 143 years of work, the Sagrada Família is facing a historic moment.
The completion of the Jesus Christ tower, which is to
be a cross that must illuminate the world. A 172-meter tower, the tallest
building in Barcelona. The tallest building in Barcelona with a unique architecture,
full of religious symbolism. The Sagrada Família is like a Bible in
stone and is a very powerful symbolic construct.
Gaudí imagines the Sagrada Família as the description of the Universal Church.
The Sagrada Família must be the temple of the luminous light. The Sagrada Família can
be perfectly interpreted as a musical instrument of colossal
magnitudes. It is the life’s work of a
genius architect. They say when they give him the degree:
“This one is either a genius or a madman.” Inspired by this photograph,
Subirachs makes a figure, eh, which is a his funeral.”
“Gaudí, when he died, the crowds say portrait of Gaudí.
For eight chapters, betevé will explain the origins,
“It is explained what had been built and how it should be followed.”
The inner workings. “It’s a chapel that must be a place of
recollection.” “Well, it’s something so big that it seems
it can’t be, can it?” And the keys to a building that 140 years
later sees its culmination approaching. of a Rambla, the Rambla full.
It went towards the Cathedral, then up, [Music]
“And we are at such a high construction pace that we constantly need to receive
stone from everywhere.” “What Gaudí envisioned, we are making it
possible together.” [Music] yes, in
a propensity towards holiness.” ‘Now yes.'”
“There are three concepts to highlight about [Music] “We are on the 54-meter roofs
of the main nave. Here we have a working platform that works very well for us
because we are right next to the crane and at this moment we are working on the
pre-assemblies of the cross modules.” The culminating moment at the Jesus Christ
tower is approaching. The modules covered with shiny white ceramic are already waiting to
be lifted and placed at the top of the terminal. Once joined, early
next year, they will form the enormous four-armed cross that
Gaudí imagined to crown the Sagrada Família.
[Music] “Gaudí already defines the cross as having
four arms.” “Why four arms? So that it can be seen
universally.” “And also because that way a cross is always
seen. Since it has two arms, no matter where you look. That is, I can see it
frontally, but if I stand laterally it’s also a cross, and if I stand on the other
side it’s also a cross, isn’t it? Therefore, eh, it has a, let’s say, global dimension. Eh,
we are talking about 13 and a half meters of arm span and 17 meters
of height.” “I believe it combines the message of a
man like Antoni Gaudí who was based on faith and culminates the building with a cross that
will be seen from all over the world.” “Gaudí had an image of the world in which there
is a struggle between evil, let’s say, the forces of evil and, eh, the forces of
light, right? And putting the cross at the top means, eh, God is with us,
Christ. And this is a reason for hope.” [Music]
“The current cross, 17 meters high, and inside is a technological marvel
impossible in Gaudí’s time. However, regarding its appearance, the maximum
possible has been respected of what he left written.”
“The key is found in the albums of the Sagrada Família that the Temple’s
promoters, the Spiritual Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph, published with
the advances of the work and Gaudí’s ideas.” “It is explained what had been built and
how it was to be followed. Okay? Um, this one from 1915, obviously, is during
Gaudí’s lifetime. Gaudí approved it, saw it, he probably didn’t write it, but he
collaborated on it. Therefore, it is important because it explains to us what Gaudí wanted
for the Temple. For us, they are the sources, the sources
that we must scrupulously follow when interpreting the Sagrada Família, eh?
And it says that the cross will be placed at the center of the transept, above the altar,
supported by the transept columns, and that it will be a four-armed cross,
fluted arms. That is, eh, meaning with slots to
be able to, it says, ‘behold the panorama to see far away.’ And regarding the materials,
the album specifically says: ‘The cross will be of cristall’ [crystal], written with an ‘e’, ‘crestall’. Nowhere
does Gaudí describe a glass cross, which would also be, eh, a greenhouse.
Thermally it could not be visited. It speaks more in these descriptions that
the, that the cross will reflect the light of the sun. The albums speak of it being
resplendent.” “Thousands of ceramic pieces like these
have been enameled and fired at the facilities of the historic Ceràmica
Comella in Granollers. They have worked on other ceramic elements of the temple,
but the cross has been the biggest challenge they have faced so far. The cross is
very, installed it looks beautiful in the end, but it is very complex because the cross
has about 15,000, 1000 pieces more or less, and there must be about 500 molds, 500 different
types of pieces. And here we had to mix extrusion pieces,
flat ones, let’s say, the flat parts, but there are also volumetric pieces,
plus all the corner pieces, which since the, the arms open up, each
piece is different, different in terms of shape, but also
in terms of color. The flat pieces, let’s say, go with the seven different whites
and the corner pieces go in white, which then has the mother-of-pearl treatment
on top. And what we are doing here is applying the mother-of-pearl treatment, which is
this. It’s a luster that goes on top, which is this luster that is blue now,
but then this is fired at a lower temperature, which does nothing to the piece,
and creates the mother-of-pearl effect once
the piece is fired.”
“To be as faithful as possible to Gaudí, the shades of white have been achieved by imitating
those of the ceramics at Park Güell, where they worked on the restoration.”
“Yes, this is where we have the laboratory, where we have the whites, where we have all the
formulas we make ourselves. We do not buy any enamel, any
commercial enamel, we prepare them all ourselves. Yes, we have the 21 whites that
we made in the 90s for Park Güell. We have all the samples, all referenced. And
then the poems are the ones we have reused, especially for the cross because
they were very intense for being outdoors, because at Park Güell there was a lot of
sun, and so that the color
shift wouldn’t be so great, we had to tone them down. In some, we had to, we have we have reached three or four tests
until finding the desired color for the Sagrada Família.”
“Gaudí also left his disciples other indications of the cross. Inside,
there would be a representation of the Lamb of God and the shape of the
arms would be anything but conventional.” “The shape of the arms of the cross, of the
four arms, the lower arm, the upper arm, is the shape of the column that starts with a square and trans-
forms into an octagon. The squares, placed, rotated, will be at the tips of the four arms
of the upper arm and at the bottom of the lower arm. And this square transforms
towards the same octagon in the center and connects perfectly
with the other arms.” [Music] “To support the cross and give it the
shape that Gaudí imagined, a metal skeleton and an latest-generation
concrete were necessary, which was provided by a company also capable of working with glass. The
Sagrada Família found it in the small Bavarian town of Gundelfingen,
Germany.” “We needed a company that was, eh, expert in
metal structures and facades for the issue of such complex,
curved, etcetera glasses, but that at the same time had experience with a material that
in English is called UHPC, eh, *Ultra High Performance Concrete*. It is an ultra-high
resistance concrete that has very little to do with a concrete as we know it.”
[Music] “Every project of the Sagrada Família is
a prototype. It is something that perhaps had
never been done, and the cross is a very clear
example of this. Where this concrete had been worked as we have used
it. Glass with the curvature that we are making. I mean that both the design
is an innovation, it is a prototype, and the fabrication. Each of the branches
has been a challenge for the
09:55.320,0:09:58.920
manufacturers who make it.” German media have echoed the
contribution to the Sagrada Família also due to a surprising coincidence. With the construction of the cross, they have
contributed to the loss of a record for Germany: that of the tallest church in the
world. It is currently Ulm Minster, at 162 meters, coincidentally located less than an hour’s
drive from where the cross was made. When it is placed, however, the Sagrada Família,
at 172 and a half meters, will take the title. Precisely a height of 172 and a half meters that
Antoni Gaudí fixed with a clear idea.
“Gaudí does not want to challenge the creator. The mountain is Montjuïc, and Montjuïc
mountain is 173 meters, right? And therefore, I will make it half a meter shorter, eh, because
the work of man cannot, eh, surpass the work of the creator, right? I say this because,
of course, there are towers that fall into what we call the complex of arrogance, right?
This would be the complex, let’s say, of Babel, right? No, the tower must reach
the highest level, but the work of man is below God.” [Music]
“Little time remains to see the cross placed, but then another challenge will
have to be tackled, the access to the viewpoint in its interior.”
“It’s an elevator with glass walls, but it has to be assembled with enormous
precautions. The last section of the Jesus tower has no elevator, you have to climb on
foot.” “Climbing means an effort. This also has
an ethical value, let’s say, right? Which is the staircase, eh? To climb the tower,
you have to sweat, eh, you have to climb, right? And
01:47.320,0:11:52.920
therefore you have to make an effort, eh? If you make an effort,
you will get to see, well, in fullness and you will reach this communion with God, right?” “And what we won’t want is for access to the
Jesus Tower to be based on whether you pay or not. Not that.”
“I suppose that will be a day, that at the end of ’26,
beginning of ’27, the June tower will be visitable.”
“The interior of the cross will be accessible to very few, but from the outside it will be seen throughout
the city. By day, reflecting the sun’s light, and by night it will be illuminated
from the evangelists’ towers and the apostles’ towers, from the towers of
the facades and that on days of great celebrations,
Gaudí says, spotlights will emerge from the four from the four arms that
will illuminate the sky. It is a cross that must illuminate the world, right? And in a way,
this, eh, if we are also faithful to the Temple albums, it is a cross that must
project light to the four cardinal points.”
[Music] [Music] But what was Antoni Gaudí like? What was
the architect of the monumental Sagrada Família like?
“After 100 years, we would like to know what a person was like without
the means, let’s say, of capture, well, like you are capturing me now, et cetera,
et cetera. From a scientific point of view, it is very difficult for me,
because it is not objective. A lot has been written about Gaudí, and a lot
has been written mainly in a fictional way, and this is of interest because he is a
figure, let’s say, that generates attraction, but historical fidelity is another matter.
The fact is that he did not like cameras.
There are some photos where he appears, you see him turning without looking at the camera, with his
arm in front, that is, he put what he was
doing in that moment first, not the the the act
of being in the photo.” “Until now, experts only recognize about thirty images of Gaudí. Nor
did he leave diaries or writings. It is not easy, then, to deeply approach
his personality. So, based on what can we say who he was? On
secondary sources, that is, those who treated him and those who worked with him,
his disciples. Eh, if we want to understand who he was, we have to look
at his work. And if we have to understand his work, we have to
look at who he was. Therefore, life and work go
01:43.920,0:14:47.560
together. It is inexcusable not to
treat them together.” “What was he like? He was a genius. There is no
doubt, eh? He was a genius, but on the other hand very traditional.”
“Gaudí is a great genius. And there are
01:55.800,0:15:01.639
very few geniuses in human history. Few.
For example, if we look in Italy, we will find Leonardo da Vinci. If we look
in Germany, we will find Johann Sebastian Bach. He was a genius because the shapes, the
volumes, the paraboloids, everything he
01:51.160,0:15:16.560
imagines breaks with the time he lives in,
but on the other hand he is profoundly faithful to the Christian tradition. Gaudí is
the ideal blend of brilliant architect and ‘die-hard’ believer.”
“Was he a, eh, closed, hermetic man? It doesn’t seem so. Character? It seems he did
have character and that it was very difficult for him to dominate it and that it was very difficult,
let’s say, to govern it, right?” “Gaudí, the word sacrifice is very
important. He practiced it, but it’s also that his work is the fruit
of sacrifice, it is the fruit of saying, ‘No, this doesn’t quite convince me,
let’s try again, let’s try again.’ And in the end, he says, Gaudí:
humility, simplicity
and intelligence. The intuition that he had in knowing how to take paths or knowing where
to work. It is, let’s say, his his greatest, the most important gift, I
think, eh? I mean that I mean he was an individual
of high capacities
01:21.680,0:16:25.560
and especially in this sense.”
The architect considered that nothing was art if it didn’t come from nature and nature was
God’s work. With the Sagrada Família, he was able to culminate his faith, he turned it into
stone, and he did it from a deep liturgical knowledge. “Around the years
1887, ’88, ’89, Gaudí met Bishop Joan Baptista
Grau i Vallespinós, who was bishop of Astorga and who was from Reus. And
this bishop commissioned the Episcopal
01:51.199,0:16:57.800
Palace from him. This bishop introduced him
to a very important book which is *L’Any
01:57.800,0:17:02.279
Litúrgic* [The Liturgical Year], all in prose,
by Guéranger, which will be somewhat his manual of
liturgical formation. Therefore, Gaudí is a self-taught person, but guided.
The fact of having to make the church made him a man of the church. And therefore,
this, eh, he became more and more involved in it, eh, also on a personal level, in terms
of living the faith, of knowing the Bible, of spiritual
experience, so that for the last 14 years he only dedicated himself to the Sagrada
Família and in the end, he even came to live here too.”
“They thought that at the Sagrada Família he had gone mad, the person who
had too much, who was not, who was a hermit.
But nothing could be further from the truth. The
01:52.280,0:17:56.880
visits he organized, many with children,
the fact that he opened the Temple to the poor,
01:56.880,0:18:01.559
even making them models for his
sculptures, turned him into a person much appreciated by the people of Barcelona.
An appreciation that they returned to him on the day of that there were 30,000 people at his
funeral, some say 30, some say 50. An entire town, and one might think they
were curious. Well, they were not
01:20.440,0:18:26.840
curious, a curious person does not prepare a
floral offering, does not sing antiphons that happens.”
“The photos are extraordinary. They speak left.
It was such a thing, wasn’t it? That people had approached to be able it was massive. Why? Gaudí died,
not in the odor of sanctity, but yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, [Music]
The towers of the Sagrada Família are, as always, the most iconic postcard of the
Temple. With only one tower finished in Gaudí’s time or with 13, or 8. It is the image
that for more than 100 years has distinguished the building and made it recognizable all over the
world. [Music] “Undoubtedly, the plastic ensemble of the 18
towers will be extraordinary.” “The construction of the central towers
represents a very important milestone in the completion of the Temple. It also represents a
great transformation of the Basilica’s
*skyline*. Gaudí wanted with
01:48.600,0:19:52.400
these towers, to communicate, as he said,
to communicate the earth with the sky and, therefore,
01:52.400,0:19:57.080
to create elements that oblige us to
look up and that create a feeling of
01:57.080,0:20:02.360
of elevation towards the
and when one is elevated one has more perspective, one sees a wider panorama, but above all one is elevated and the
sky is the metaphor for the place where God lives, right? It is the house of God, right? Therefore, on the one hand, the tower, eh, already
symbolically represents accessing the house of God.” The central towers stand out
considerably above the rest. The one of Jesus Christ, with the cross that will
crown it, will dominate a group of six towers ranging from 135 to 172 meters in height
and which Gaudí decided to arrange in a specific way.
“He surrounded the tower of Jesus with the evangelists and behind, as a protector, he
placed the Mother of God. The central towers, like the entire Sagrada Família,
form a symbolic whole. So we have the four towers already finished that
represent the four evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, right? With the
symbolic figures that we call tetramorph, right? Four forms. Tower of the Mother of
God. The Gospels speak of the life of Jesus and without the Mother of God there
would have been no Jesus. But Jesus is the center of gravity of faith and of
the Church.” [Music]
The tower of the Mother of God is the second tallest in the Basilica, at 138 meters
high. It is crowned by a 12-pointed star made of glass and stainless steel. It
weighs 5 and a half tons and it was raised already assembled, all in one piece. Below the star there is a 6-meter crown
made of stone that holds 12 wrought iron stars. They were created by the
master blacksmith and sculptor Eric Plana Monferrer, at his workshop in El Papiol,
Baix Llobregat. They are stars of different sizes made piece by piece with precision
gained by hammer blow. Monferrer also molded the pieces of the
upper star with fire and hammer. superior. [Music] The almost levitating ascent of the
figures representing the four evangelists: the lion Mark,
the ox Luke, the eagle John
and the angel Matthew. It has been one of the most impressive
moments of the works in recent years.
Work of the sculptor Xavier Medina Campeny, they are made of white Tassos marble.
From the height, they search for humans with their gaze.
The wings, the most complicated piece, are made of a special high-quality and
resistant concrete to withstand wind and earthquakes. [Music]
“These towers have been built with pioneering systems, unique in the world. At
that time technology has allowed them to be made more
similar to how Gaudí would have made them, which is with stone blocks and not having to
make them of reinforced concrete, where the stone is a cladding.”
“When the Temple, eh, is complete,
there will be 18 towers, 18 towers between 100 and 172 meters high
in the space of just one city block. Gaudí had to find unprecedented
solutions to make such an ambitious project possible.”
“How are the towers supported? The towers of the Nativity Facade, of the Passion Facade,
do not have many secrets. They are supported first because the shape of the tower is a
parabolic shape, a catenary curve shape, so that its weight falls directly to the
ground. But this could be built by themselves without building the
interior.” “Simple. But Gaudí is the first to
use geometry to design a tower. On the facades, the bell towers can
support themselves, but the central towers cannot. Below is the nave
and here there is a secret. Gaudí innovates and designs everything without buttresses.
The central towers, then, are supported by the columns of the naves and columns
that join up until they reach the
02:35.480,0:24:40.640
foundation. It means he loved the Gothic very
much and reconverts it at the Sagrada Família with the fact that the weight of everything that is
above, that is, of the vaults, of the roofs, of the central towers, is not
supported like the Gothic ones with large buttresses or flying buttresses located on the
facades, but the weight of these elements is collected by tree-
columns, by inclined columns, and communicated directly to the foundation.” “Antoni Gaudí knows that he can only personally
direct a minimum part of the works of the Sagrada Família, and that is why
he builds or designs in great detail some pieces of the Temple that will later in
the future serve as a model, as a pattern for building the rest of the
building.” “He made the dome of the sacristy as
an architectural model, as an architectural example for the central towers.
The central towers, if you look at them from further away, you clearly see that their shape
is like that of the sacristy, but with longer windows because the tower
is taller.” “The shape of the central towers does not
strictly follow that of the Nativity towers because Gaudí makes an evolution of
them. While he is building the facade, which goes up based on
donations, and goes through periods of great poverty, he can plan
the redesign of the rest of the Basilica. Instead of being directly an
equilibrium shape that is a suspended catenary, that works under tension, and by turning it
upside down it works under compression, he proposes to do it with ruled forms, which are
forms with a curved appearance, but which are in
02:14.919,0:26:20.039
fact generated by straight lines.” [Music]
[Applause] [Music] “But nothing in Gaudí is accidental, but
everything has an intention. And the placement of the bell towers on the
facades is a great example of this. As a basilica or cathedral, it has a very high
arrangement of bell towers and space for bells. With this system, what he does
is that on each facade he wants to allow the sound to reach at least 3 kilometers
away.” But that still takes time. Work is only
just beginning on the bell towers of the Glory Facade.
“We are already working on the construction of the towers of this facade. Next
year, ’26, right? The centenary year of Gaudí’s death. And therefore it is, eh, as a for our tribute, to finish the,
eh, central towers and continue with the initiating the construction of the Glory
Facade.” The calculation is that this facade, with the
last four towers of the Temple, will be finished in 10 years. Then yes,
the postcard will be complete. And the next chapter, the interior of the
Sagrada Família. “The light that filters through the stained
glass windows and the forest of columns. Gaudí imagines that it is not an interior, but a forest.
It really was a brutal challenge, but the Father managed it.
The column,
02:16.360,0:28:20.960
I believe, is the most important
contribution Gaudí makes to the history
0:00:28:20.960,0:28:26.519
of architecture.” The crypt, where it all
began, and the Pope’s visit that unveiled the
nave to the world. “It made people open their eyes to the rich content that is the whole environment
of the Basilica’s interior and the Assumption chapel, one of the great
construction objectives for next year. And this will be a square
space of approximately 9 meters by 9 meters and with a with a large vault and
a dome that will reach up to 30 meters in height.”
“An attitude towards the sky, towards the people, with a a direct gaze.
It’s a chapel that must be a place of recollection.”
[Music]

La Sagrada Família té per endavant un any històric. El 2026 es commemorarà el centenari de la mort d’Antoni Gaudí i la construcció del temple assolirà una de les seves grans fites: la inauguració de la torre de Jesucrist, que no només es convertirà en el punt més alt del temple sinó que també ho serà de la ciutat.

Subscriu-te al canal de Youtube de betevé: https://www.youtube.com/c/betevé

Segueix betevé a:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betevecat/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@btvnoticies
X: https://twitter.com/beteve
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/betevecat
Web: https://www.beteve.cat