What's the Oldest Active Building Project in the World?

The Sagrada Familia Basilica was started by Antoni Gaudí in 1882 and is still undergoing its initial construction today. Learn more about the architect and his long-running project in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum Here. La Basilica de la Sagrada Familia,
or the Basilica of the Holy Family in Barcelona, Spain,
is unlike any building in the world. The church's famous
Nativity facade looks from a distance like a supersized drip
sand castle, but closer inspection reveals ornately sculpted towers that

(00:26):
have been described as the Bible written in stone. The
architect of the Sagrada Familia was the eccentric and deeply
religious cutal on artist Antony Gordy, who was struck and
killed by a street car in ninety six when only
the Nativity facade of his master work had been completed.
At that point, the rest of the ambitious structure existed
only in Godi's complex architectural drawings and scale plaster models. Tragically,

(00:52):
Goodie's priceless models and most of his drawings were destroyed
by anarchist revolutionaries just ten years after his death, and
ever since, generations of architects and engineers have labored to
piece together Godi's singular vision and finish his magnum opus.
As of this writing, the Sagrada Familia is one hundred
and thirty seven years old. The first stone was late

(01:14):
in eighteen eighty two, making it the longest running active
building project on Earth. Not the longest running ever, though,
to name just one. Cologne Cathedral in Germany was started
in twelve forty eight and completed in eighteen eighty. It
wasn't until twenty nineteen that the City of Barcelona officially
granted Sagrada Familia a construction permit, even though Godi applied

(01:37):
for one in eighteen eighty five. The permit itself was
the most expensive on record, a whopping four point six
million euros that's around five point two million dollars American
to complete the monumental project by six, which will be
the one hundredth anniversary of Godi's death. As an architect
and structural engineer, Godi was at least a century ahead

(01:58):
of his time. His eleven vision airy works in and
around Barcelona, seven of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites,
demonstrate how Godi employed wildly innovative building techniques to mimic
the beauty of nature. Godi's park Gwill, on a hill
overlooking Barcelona, features a broad patio contained by wavy, curved

(02:18):
walls adorned colorful Mediterranean tiled mosaics, and his casa batio
looks as if an alien apartment complex landed in the
middle of a nineteenth century city. Its breathtaking facade is
an architectural quilt of curved stone, iron, glass, and tile,
all girded by God's uncanny grasp of engineering and material science.

(02:39):
Godi was a devout and passionate Catholic who believed that
the deepest way to commune with God was to abide
in nature his creation. When thirty one year old Godi
received the commission to build the Sagada Familia church, he
drew up plans for a towering structure with eighteen spires
representing the twelve apostles for evangelists, the Virgin Mary and
Jesus Christ. Pope Francis's rumored to be considering Godi, known

(03:03):
sometimes as God's Architect, as a candidate for sainthood. In
contrast with the grand exterior, the inside of Sagrada Familia
is meant to evoke a naturalistic forest of stone. Massive
pillars stretched from floor to ceiling, where their twisting branches
intertwined to form an ornate canopy. Work was slow due
to the technical complexities of the cathedral and the fact

(03:24):
that it relied solely on private donations. Godi worked on
the Sagrada Familia for forty years, fully devoting the last
years of his life to the project. His biographer once
told the TV show Sixty Minutes he wanted to write
the history of the Catholic faith in one building and
added the Godi slept the construction site and took little
care for appearance, wearing frayed pants held up by a

(03:46):
rope belt. Godi knew that he wouldn't live to complete
his master work, so he drew up detailed architectural plans and,
most importantly, scale plaster models of each of the cathedral's
sculpted facades and tow wring spires. When Godi was killed
in the nineteen six tram accident, his associates were able
to keep building based on the architect's drawings and models.

(04:09):
But then the Spanish Civil War erupted in nineteen thirty
six and gangs of anarchists targeted churches as symbols of
institutional oppression. The Sagrada Familia was attacked and although the
structure was saved, the anarchists broke into the architect's workshop
and smashed Goodie's plaster models. Without those models, progress on
Sagrada Familia slowed to a crawl, further delayed by the

(04:31):
decades long fascist rule of Francisco Franco. Later, when New
Zealand born architecture student Mark Bury backpacked through Spain in
the nineteen seventies, he was recruited to the cause of
finishing Sagrada Familia while remaining true to Godi's original vision.
When Bury asked how these Stonemasons and other craftsmen were
receiving their instructions, he was shown boxes and boxes containing

(04:53):
the fragmented remains of Godie's plaster models. Bury told sixty minutes,
my job is to reverse engineer the models. It was
considered the only way to faithfully reconstruct the vision locked
inside Godie's singular mind. Barie worked on Sagarda Familia for
thirty years and is responsible for bringing the project into

(05:13):
the twenty first century. He consulted with industrial designers working
on vehicles, ships, and other complex engineering problems. All of
them were using three D aeronautical drafting software. The could
prototype designs and materials digitally before constructing them in the
real world. So Bury decided to employ the same drafting
technology to solve Sagrada Familia's thorniest engineering challenges on computers

(05:36):
before casting them in concrete, iron, and stone. For a
one and thirty seven year old construction project, Today's Sagrada
Familia is remarkably high tech. In addition to using the
latest virtual modeling software, components are prototyped using three D printers,
and architects can explore and interact with digital models using
virtual reality. Because of these technological and engineering advances, the

(05:59):
car chief architect of the Sagada Familia, Jordie Foley's confident
that Gordie's grandiose structure, including the tallest church spire in
the world set at five hundred and sixty six feet
that's a hundred and seventy three, will finally be completed
in At least that's the hope. As fully mused to
Architect Magazine, are the great cathedrals and basilicas of the

(06:21):
world ever truly finished. Today's episode was written by Dave
Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang. Grain Stuff is a
production of I Heart Radio's house to Works. For more
in this lots of other topics that we're always working on,
visit our home planet as to Works dot com and
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(06:42):
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