Word: joans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Sagrada Familia is . . . the reflection of the soul of the people. Woe the day that it is halted!" -- Catalan poet Joan Maragall...
...interrupted work of imagination be completed decades after its creator is gone? In the years since Gaudi's death in 1926, such admirers as architects Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius and artists Joan Miro and Antoni Tapies have demanded a halt to construction, which has been under way in fits and starts since 1882. Continuing to work on the building, contends architect Josep Anton Acebillo, is "like adding arms to the Venus de Milo." Nonetheless, the building continues to be financed privately -- and enthusiastically -- by contributors ranging from Catalan nationalists to Japanese businessmen to American tourists...
...Architect Jordi Bonet, who supervises the construction budget, says the opponents are "people who don't want a church as the emblem of our city." Moreover, Subirachs has publicly scorned the abstract artists favored by city hall in its Olympic building binge -- and the disdain is mutual. Says poet Joan Brossa: "Gaudi was avant-garde, but Subirachs is retro-garde...
Architectural education is also a factor. "Gaudi invented a new system of architecture," says Catalan professor Joan Bassegoda. "Instead of the geometry of rectangles and circles, he took his structures from nature, studying what forms allow trees and humans to grow and stay upright." Hyperbolas, parabolas, helices and helicoids, the curving, open-ended forms Gaudi used, were calculated so precisely that computers have shown his measurements to be perfect. Today computer-driven diamond saws are cutting Gaudi-designed inclined columns to support the nave, replacing Gothic architecture's flying buttresses. "We're still learning from Gaudi's genius," says Bassegoda...
Administration: Susan Lynd, David Richardson, Clementina Allured, Hope Almash, Melissa August, Donald N. Collins, Joan A. Connelly, Ann V. King, Anne D. Moffett, Judith R. Stoler News Desks: Breena Clarke, Brian Doyle, Waits L. May III, Susanna M. Schrobsdorff, Pamela H. Thompson, Diana Tollerson, Joanne Waugh, Ann Drury Wellford, Mary Wormley...