I visited this and several other Gaudi buildings about 15 years ago in Barcelona, and many of them are truly breathtaking, or at least dramatically original and unique. I went to the Gaudi museum as well and found it fascinating that the architect himself was not a professional mathematician - he did not use hyperbolic cosine to calculate the dimensions of the catenary curves, he traced the outline of hanging chains. Really interesting to hear about how he also heavily used ratios and symmetry. I love how artistic taste can be partially derived from math (but the math itself isn't sufficient to develop artistic taste)

• hammock

  today at 4:53 PM

  Designing in an era where calculus exists, using chains and weights strikes me as gratuitous or onanistic.

  The Ancient Greeks and Romans also used the same or similar empirical geometric methods to generate ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas in their architecture. The difference is, they were still 1000-2000 years away from having formalized calculus.

  • MengerSponge

    today at 5:13 PM

    Calculus exists, but analytic solutions generally don't. Gaudi's chains and weights serve as an incredibly elegant mechanical computer that were only surpassed in the last few decades by CAD. Designers used mechanical splines until the advent of CAD in the 70's/80's.

• lo_zamoyski

  today at 3:43 PM

  > I love how artistic taste can be partially derived from math [...] the math itself isn't sufficient to develop artistic taste

  Strictly speaking, it isn't "math" as math is the science of quantity and structure, both of which are objective features of reality. We all perceive structure and quantity as it is instantiated in concrete things and ensembles of concrete things and so on. We all respond to and reason about quantifiable and structural properties of reality at varying depths all the time. All math does is pursue them intentionally and methodically. It isn't surprising, then, that a competent artist should intuit various mathematical truths. Indeed, quantity and structure as essential to art. The artist is therefore closer to a domain-specific application where such properties are understood in relation to the subject matter. This introduces a domain-specific aesthetic dimension that is not present in abstracted properties, though one can certainly make aesthetic judgements about abstracted properties.

• rramadass

  today at 2:10 PM

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48860150

Be sure to visit the basement museum to see the upside-down string + tiny sandbag weights model that was used to simulate the structure. Pure genius.

"Gothic cathedrals and Doric temples are mathematics in stone. Doubtless Pythagoras was the first in the Classical Culture to conceive number scientifically as the principle of a world-order of comprehensible things—as standard and as magnitude—but even before him it had found expression, as a noble arraying of sensuous-material units, in the strict canon of the statue and the Doric order of columns. The great arts are, one and all, modes of interpretation by means of limits based on number (consider, for example, the problem of space-representation in oil painting). A high mathematical endowment may, without any mathematical science whatsoever, come to fruition and full self-knowledge in technical spheres." ~ Spengler, Decline of the West

• n4r9

  today at 1:23 PM

  I had to put this one through Claude, but it boils down to:

  > A culture's felt sense of proportion, ratio, and spatial order manifest directly through the hands of masons and sculptors, without necessarily needing the mathematical formalism of proofs, axioms, and treatises.

  Not sure how I feel about this, as the Familia was absolutely built in a context of formalised mathematical sciences.

  • blitzar

    today at 2:03 PM

    It seems somewhat important to me to know if something was done because it looked pretty, was random or because there was an intent to reflect maths, science, planetary alignment etc.

    • lo_zamoyski

      today at 3:48 PM

      Whatever one might say about method, epistemically speaking, the aesthetic is prior to the mathematical. The mathematical is found in the analysis of the beautiful.

      • hammock

        today at 4:57 PM

        Truth, beauty and goodness are known as the “transcendentals” for a reason. They are linked. They don’t come one after the other.

    • rramadass

      today at 2:07 PM

      Mathematics and Art - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_and_art

      Wikipedia on "Sagrada Família" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia (see "Geometric Details" section).

      Gaudí used hyperboloid structures in later designs for Sagrada Família (more obviously after 1914). However, there are a few places on the nativity façade—a design not equated with Gaudí's ruled-surface design—where the hyperboloid appears.

Gaudi stuff is cool. I used to live in Barcelona, I know all about it. But numerology is not the same as mathematics- nothing in the article comes close to sniffing at the math of classical architecture. And while many have said I have a well-developed architectural taste, and I certainly understand the artistic fascination and amusement with Gaudi’s works, I never understood the magnitude of architectural devotion that they have attracted.

Call me grumpy, but numerology does not make architecture more beautiful.

• meta-level

  today at 4:04 PM

  That's not grumpy but ignorant. Aspect ratios are not numerology (per se)

Vaguely related, there is also the unfinished Cathedral of Justo [1] near Madrid built by a solo developer since 1961 and essentially by hand and more or less from scrap and whatever people donated. Justo Gallego Martínez died in 2021 at age 96 and donated the building to some foundation for completion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Justo

Such a spectacular building. I could spend all day watching those color gradients move across the walls and floor.

"The temple’s dimensions are based on the number 12 and a module of 7.5m."

12 / 7.5 = 1.6 ~= Golden ratio

I went went once it's very beautiful inside! And the view from the top is also wow! Thanks for sharing this

[dead]