Google's latest doodle celebrates the 161st birthday of Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan architect whose iconic buildings have left an indelible mark on Barcelona.
Gaudí, who met his untimely death under the wheels of a city tram in 1926, took with him to the grave his vision for his masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia church.
Work continues on the vast Roman basilica and visitors flock to Barcelona every year to see it and his other works, including Park Guell, a steep garden complex with architectural elements and Casa Batllo, a mansion on the city's Passeig de Gracia.
Research suggested in 2011 that Gaudí used the garden of a psychiatric hospital as a testing ground for his revolutionary designs, with the patients serving as his artisans. The grounds of the hospital at Sant Boi, south of Barcelona, are littered with Gaudí-esque constructions, the most outstanding of which is a bench similar to those in Park Guell, finished with broken tiles in a style known as trencadis that was pioneered by Gaudí.
The relative crudeness of the work had previously suggested that the works were copies, but research published in the magazine Sapiens showed that they pre-date Gaudí's signature buildings and were in fact prototypes for features in Park Guell, the Sagrada Familia and the nearby Colonia Guell, all of which Gaudí was working on at the time.
While Gaudí was part of the art nouveau movement, he was also a revolutionary structural engineer. He made an upside-down model of the Sagrada Familia to test his structural theory, which he then tested in practice when he built Colonia Guell.
Known as "God's architect", Gaudí's deep Catholic faith has left admirers lobbying the Vatican to have him beatified.
Source: Guardian.co.uk/
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