Philosophies Behind Architecture: The Work of Antoni Gaudí as a Response to Modernity

The emergence of modern and contemporary Architecture in the West is intimately linked to the background culture that spread across the intellectual centers of Europe and the US between early nineteenth century and the Second World War. Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) is a major representative of a style of architecture that asks and answers the questions posed by modernity and industrialization with an attitude of resistance. The purpose of this course is to pair these two perspectives: first, an exploration of the history of the most influential movements in Architecture and Interior Design since 1850 and the philosophies and historical events that explain their impact. Second, an elucidation of the originality and relevance of Antoni Gaudí in light of this international context. The course will combine texts by Marx, Smith, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Emerson, Walt Whitman, or Nelson Goodman with those of Cerdà, William Morris, or Adolf Loos, so as to shed light on the most representative buildings and interiors of the period: from the 1851 Crystal Palace of London to the state of La Sagrada Família in 1926, the year Gaudí died. The poles of this history will be represented by industrialization on one side, and autographic craftsmanship on the other. In particular, we will disentangle the tension between creativity and uniformization and their influence in the building of an entire artistic sensibility and culture, in architecture as in politics.