Dacau

"Work will make you free"

50,000 prisoner ground

Statue for the Dead

The Special Prisoner jail

8 Months of Complete Darkness

Room 16

Room 24

Room 27

Fingernail Marks

Leading on

Prisoner House

Toilet

Beds

Doorway

Body Furnace

"Shower room" [Gas Chamber Never used here]

Doors to Experimentation and Furnace Room

Doors to the Gas Chamber

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The concentration camps during World War Two were conceived by a maniac destined to change humanity and architecture forever. Looking closely at a diminutive process of Roman Classical design strikes fear into the hearts of the weak. But lowering the standards tenfold sets the stage to a death camp. The prisoners born, built, lived and died in these huts.

Designed for 52 persons, 400 were gently crammed into the space. Overloaded and under-heated the prisoners froze to death. Diseases, bugs and lack of showers allowed for more to perish horrifically. Forced to build these buildings they worked to death. Little place for food storage and cooking spaces allowed the prisoners to die of starvation.

For architecture can cause anger and spite just as humans do. They took advantage of a beautiful art-form to push humanity to it's lowest. An age of shame and misery should never be forgotten, ignored or doubted. It is a troubling existence to be born with this history so clear.

A humbleness never found and shan't never be forgotten.

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Sagrada Familia

A Sanctum

The Bone Columns

Beautiful Stone Works

Lights of the Pendant

Stairs of Glory

Spiral of a Shell Stairway

Over the City of Barcelona

The Delicate light of a sidewall

Button Light shafts

Fingers holding the Flowering Roof

Details of the Exterior

Massively detailed yet minimalist in Nature

Entrance and Exit of the Light

--

My words are but bitter ends 

of the fantastic tale 

from architecture. 

I have but little to say, 

for the phenomenal phenomenological 

extrusion speaks deeply for itself.

The Time has finally come to pronounce the most magnificent, eccentric and obtuse building of today. Barcelona houses many of the genius works by Antoni Gaudi--a Catalonian Art Nouveau architect. The pieces are erected through natural metamorphose animal bodies. Casa Batllo was dually based on sea creatures and a dragon. The spine can be found wrapping flawlessly throughout the structure. While this seems odd the particularity to the site imbues a cohesive succinctness.

Rising speedily from the limestone and cobble street protrudes a spiraling sandcastle of unproportioned height. The structure bears unequivocal effigies of many once lost in the times of old. For the buildings is a Cathedral. Temple La Sagrada Familia is an amorphous fixture of light, details and brazened colours. The exterior seems engrossed with excessive amounts of decoration but standing before it you realize the beautiful nature of minimalism. It is the tallest and most decorated humble structure in existence.

Once you enter the unfortunate construction gate you find yourself in the stomach of a colourful flower. It dances before you. It looms overhead and speaks kindly. The building engulfs all who impertinently enter. Gasping upwards you notice the columns of bones relinquishing the weight of the towers. They capitalize by presenting a flower arrangement for the hospitable.

Following the tower stair takes you above a city crafted by this genius. You gasp over the many buildings lacing the streets and finally enter the balconies floating nicely many stories up. You catch all your butterflies and exit the spiral stair. The stone stairs start to spiral into a shell which fits wholly with the sandcastle look. You exit to find yourself once more in the tomb of white bones.

The buildings speaks with a delicate nature around the details but worries not to throw forth a bold fist. Every inch is designed. Every voice is found. The light genitally guides and the stone coldly holds. The architecture is majestic. Like all grand Cathedrals, the buildings has taken and will take many hundreds of years to complete. My humble wish to fulfill some architectural desire would be to perform with the theatre of Sagrada Familia.

--

A Clock or a Building

Marienplatz

Iconographic Propaganda

The Glockenspiel

Lanterns

The Corner Dragon

Inner Courtyard of Glockenspiel

Courtyard Stairs & Windows

Grotesques

Screaming Grotesques

--

A charming and childish design by a Bavarian King joins hopes with my gear oriented mind. The Glockenspiel in Muenchen is rather tasteful. A four-hundred year old dancing music box still plays away granting the magical wish of every youth to come true. The gigantic bells display five suspenseful minutes towards the coming of the hour. The Crowd stands tensely waiting for a bright light to unfold before them. The Hour is struck and the machine goes to work. 

A striking example of the endowment experiential architecture can hold. To draw and gather a crowd year round brings to lights its supernatural trait. Learning from this urban situation can provide any scanty architect with inspiration and wit. A building can be much more than a purely functional design. In fact the details and poetics of a building tend to become function in themselves. For power of social perception and glad tidings to all who view the building should be first rate material for design. Making people happy is the best any architect can foster. Making people safe, sustainable and livable is expected and menial toward the whole. The Glockenspiel is an example of Aesthetics, Poetics and Function--the three components of great architecture.

--

A Hotel

A lovely Chair to see the Portico

From afar the Sunlight Shines

On Details of Delight

and of Details far Gone

To Sparkle like Porcelain

Into the Night Lights

and Skylights

--

Glamorous as the London Palladium but strikingly smaller. [well maybe not the London Palladium] Apartment complexes turned hotel became a popular move to bring the wealthy and wise tourist to Barcelona. Crammed like a tuna stands a hotel of lovely proportions. While many may express their dislikes of 'old fashioned-ness' I find a certain quaintness to the entirety. As if I were standing at a door during the twenties, the antiquary hotel delivers a pallet of refuge. I fell in love. Though it is a bit odd to find this place in dapper reform for its minimalist approach seems lovely and tolerable to this current society. A wonderful work is the Hotel Agua Alegre.

--

A Park for Creatures and Morphous'

The Mouth of a Creature

And the Scales of a Beast

Draws flowing Waves of tiling Lights

Into the depths of a Sand Castle

and Speaks Diligently abroad the Tower.

 --

The obtuse Park Güell by Antoni Gaudi holds many treasures and delights. The entrance brings lights to a dying breed of tile projects. Laced throughout are broken pieces of plates, pottery and tiles lighting the park in splendid eminence. Shapes of comic beasts join together singing colourful symphonies of grace. A hypostylic hall holds tubes for water supply and livens the field above. A few buildings including the elusive and majestic architect's house sit blindly behind landscaped trees calling for the viewer to immerse themselves on the tasteful colours and shapes. Finally, the arcade of cave-like columns line the edge of the park bounding the audience to weave through a tunnel of rock. The Park is exuberant, fun and immaculate.

--

The House of Bones

Spiny Stairs

Mushroom Stove

Captivating Door

Spiraling Light a living sea creature

Drawback Windows

A Spot for a Seat

Place for a Hand

Light Chasm

Light Holes

Ribs of the Beast

Chimney Faces

Crown of the Dragon

--

A spectacle of amazement is the Batllo Casa in Barcelona. The extraordinarily obtuse house feigns nothing but peculiarity and amusement. The house for bones drys my mouth and restores me from some respiratory failure. It truly is a marvelous amorphous design. Antonio Gaudi is but a genius in his Art.

A cohesive design sets the building apart from the surfeit of other architecture ice-cream flavors. Building upon the omnipotent design of a spiny dragon sits the entrance and stair. The house swallows you whole grasping your ankles and pulling you through an organic array of inset lore. The chairs, the lights, the windows and door all fill the voids to perfection. Every detail is conceived. Every detail is born. Every measure of perfection is thought through. Life is breathed within.

A humbling structure brazened in glory bashes my design ability to a meager popper. Struggling to reclaim some ability in architecture I have become inspired beyond vitality itself. I shutter to imagine my coming design in comparison to master Gaudi but I shall strive to do my best. Architecture can not achieve a heightened level of being until one designs fully. There should be little pleasure in design abstention. To shape a building or any Art in that matter to half mast is to destroy Anima--its spirit.

Let us recapitulate upon our journey. All space, every micron and each material is brought to life. Gaudi rendered the building whole. Every detail is set. Nothing is misplaced. All has purpose, beauty and poetics. From the tiles in the light chasm to the circle of nodes on the ceiling, the intent is fair and just.

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