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The strange yet majestic spires

of the Sagrada Familia
dominate Barcelona's skyline

as if they were the backdrop
to a science fiction movie.

This church is the only one of its kind.

According to Antoni Gaugi, its creator,

the parabolic spires symbolize the connection

between gravity and light.

The highest spire is supposed to be over 550 feet.

The inner structure of the
church is revolutionary.

For the first time in the history of architecture,

strange shapes like these emerge.

But where do they come from?

No two columns are alike.

Every capital is unparalleled.

Every element of this enigmatic
construction is unique.

It was designed by its creator
to be a wonder of the world.

But to this day, it remains unfinished.

Over decades, countless
people have asked themselves

what is the concept underlying
this architectural structure?

Where is the construction plan

so that we can finish this church,

the greatest church of Christianity?

Gaudi's plan was to build the
basilica with five naves,

a monumental construction
with a total of 18 spires.

When he died, only one of them had been completed.

His legacy, the foundation for his church,

may be incomplete.

Yet, it is absolutely perfect.

Everything was carefully planned.

This is also confirmed by Gaudi
scholar, Cesar Martinell,

in his memoir.

When it comes to teaching,

Gaudi leaves nothing to improvisation.

The right sentence,

a sharp-witted remark in the middle of a dialogue

is always rooted in very careful reflection.

Hence, the miniature model of the temple

was not just built on a whim.

It was supposed to give them important insights.

Because the problems they
would encounter building it

would be identical to the ones they would have

when building the real temple.

Whoever wants to complete the church

first has to learn how to read the models.

They have to crack the code,
decipher the encryption.

The gypsum puzzle is simultaneously

the building instructions.

After the devastations of the Spanish Civil War,

which began in 1936,

this is all that remains of the models,

thousands of broken pieces,

which are now the only clues
of the architect's vision.

For decades, scientists have tried everything

to solve this puzzle,

but it is only today that we finally have

a more or less clear understanding

of Gaudi's construction principle.

It is a paradoxical system

in which every piece is different from the next.

Nevertheless, in their entirety,

these pieces create an overall image.

In a way, it is a perfect construction.

The Sagrada Familia has many secrets.

What message is it supposed to convey?

Its creator is about to be beatified.

He is the missing piece

to the puzzle surrounding the building.

Where was he from?

What was it like at the time he lived?

What made him the man he was?

Everything in this church is providence

including my work as its architect.

Antoni Gaudi is born in 1852

in Reus in Southern Catalonia.

At the time, many people are moving

from the countryside to the cities

due to industrialization.

The metropolitan areas are turning

into the new social hotspots

of a new Marxist working class.

Gaudi's native city is one such hotspot,

a city which is home to
revolutionists, separatists,

and militant opponents of the church.

I have the gift of understanding space

because I am the son, grandson, and great-grandson

of a boilermaker, these
generations of people

whose spatial imagination have prepared me.

The only thing that overshadows

Gaudi's childhood is a serious
illness, a rheumatic disease.

For a child, a rheumatic disease is a disaster.

Because he is not given enough space

and his peers exclude him,

the result is that the child retreats

to another sphere of life,
which is available to him.

In the case of Gaudi, it was nature.

Nature offers a huge variety of experiences.

In nature, the child
experiences the various winds,

the tide, and lots of different shapes.

It may have been these naturally occurring shapes

that had the biggest impact
on Gaudi's young artistry.

This was certainly an impulse for his creativity.

Gaudi seeks to explore nature.

He wants to understand its laws,

how the different forces interact

and what kind of shapes it creates.

He sees the latter as the blueprint of creation,

something which contains all geometric shapes.

He reclaims these natural
shapes for his architecture,

the spiral shape, the parabolic
shape, the hyperbola,

which looks like an hourglass.

Gaudi's organic architecture
doesn't just imitate nature

like the artists of Art Nouveau do.

Gaudi visualizes the forces of nature

at work beneath the surface

and therefore brings movements to his buildings.

Gaudi is 17 when he begins to study in Barcelona,

a Mediterranean city which is about to become

a European metropolis
Modernity and tradition,

riot and religious fundamentalism
violently crash here.

Of all places, one man chooses this city

characterized by the most
radical anarchy in Europe

to build a giant church.

Is he a genius or is he insane?

This is the question his professors ask themselves

when they award him his diploma.

The young architect appears sophisticated

and deliberately fashionable,

which might have helped him

in moving up in Barcelona's society.

In Barcelona, he also crosses
paths with Eusebi Guell

who would later become his patron.

I think they understood each other

from the very beginning.

There is one sentence from
my daughter in this book

which confirms this.

Gaudi and the Count of Guell

were two completely different characters.

They had very different upbringings,

a different educational background,

and they belonged to different social classes,

but they always got along
really well with each other.

They had a profound connection,

understanding each other in a fundamental way,

which often occurs when people

have similar artistic inclinations.

Guell, a wealthy textile manufacturer,

introduces his friend

to the intellectual circles of the bourgeoisie.

Gaudi feels comfortable there.

He meets leading representatives
of art and politics

and visits the theater and the opera.

In his heart, however, he
feels a sense of belonging

to the working class

whose miserable living conditions worry him.

These two extremes,

the conservative core values he believes in

and the revolutionary ideas he has

define the conflict that Gaudi
deals with his entire life.

The synthesis of old and new
becomes his signature theme.

Originality means go back to the sources,

the simplicity of the first solutions.

The struggle between tradition and modernity

also interferes with the social fabric.

Old patterns are broken,

and a new freedom of thought and action

spreads among large parts of the population.

In Europe's cities, mass societies develop

and with them, the first capitalist ideas.

The pressure to reform is also
felt by the Catholic church.

As a result, the Pope convokes
the first Vatican Council.

It is an attempt to suppress
the opening towards modernity

and the enlightenment that is taking place

within the church.

The Catholic church and modernity

stand in stark contradiction.

Well, the Catholic church and modernity

stand in stark contradiction to one another.

Because modernity has nothing

but damaged the Catholic church

in the last 300 to 400 years
since the Enlightenment.

Therefore, the church had to come up with ways

to defend itself.

One of them was the so-called
Oath Against Modernism.

Even I still had to take it.

This oath against modernism,

which is written in Latin of course,

contains everything the
Catholic church doesn't like.

For example, philosophers like
Hegel and Kant and so forth.

All of this was a loss of power.

To bring people back

to the tenant of the Catholic church,

that was the original mission
of the expiatory temple

of the Sagrada Familia.

This church of the poor is supposed to be financed

exclusively from donations.

After just one year,

when they just begin building the crypt,

the diocese architect resigns.

Josep Maria Bocabella, the
church project's initiator,

makes a surprising choice for his successor.

Bocabella's decision

to commission the continuation of the works

at the Sagrada Familia to Gaudi was controversial.

At the time, Gaudi was not a religious person,

let alone a Catholic.

Also, he was involved in several projects,

which traditional Catholics
viewed as a contradiction

to the Catholic church.

Bocabella's enthusiasm

for Gaudi's concept catches on.

His design envisages a much statelier building

than that of the first architect.

He was aware of his talent.

He thought of himself as an architectural genius,

and he felt that by building a major cathedral

in ten years time, he would rank

among the world's greatest architects

at the age of 43 or 45,

but he was not in the least
driven by any religious motives.

The temple has to inspire
a feeling of divineness.

With all the corresponding facets

and its unlimited possibilities,

in the temple, grandeur and
rigor have to be united.

Gaudi begins to modify the Neo-Gothic design

according to his own ideas.

Does he want to honor the name
of God or primarily his own?

Does he support Catholic anti-modernism?

Or does he want to respond to it

with a cathedral of modernism

that contradicts any tradition
of church architecture?

It is written in the Gospel of John,

"God must be worshiped in spirit,

"not in this or that place."

That means the historical Jesus

took the bread out of the mouth
of all church architects,

all Christian church architects.

Mister Gaudi must have felt that.

That, putting up this kind of structure

in the landscape or rather in the cityscape

is something that contradicts the will of Christ,

and that he also did something

that he might have found revolting,

which is turning the spectator's
eye up towards the sky.

While the Christian idea,
the basic Christian idea,

is to pray to a child in a stable.

We were directed downwards

to things concealed, to small things.

That is a major contradiction.

While Gaudi, almost in passing,

designs this gigantic plan,

which posterity will need a
long time to understand,

he manages to become an acclaimed architect

for the rich upper class.

Many jobs are commissioned to him

by his friend Eusebi Guell.

It is a good time for architects.

During the era of modernism,
the Catalan Art Nouveau,

the upper classes are loosening
their purse strings.

Hundreds of buildings are commissioned.

Those who can afford it hire Gaudi.

In other places, construction is going on as well.

Things from nature become the
central element of an era,

the Art Nouveau.

All across Europe, people revel in its beauty.

Different though the details are,

its romantic playfulness connects cities

as different as Barcelona and Vienna.

Vienna, the world's capital of Art Nouveau.

The buildings are defined by curved forms

and delicately chiseled ornamentation.

However, behind the decorative facades,

there is a smoldering fear of the bourgeoisie

being snowballed by modern developments.

Progress has become inexorable,

and there is a growing desire

that everything should stay the way it is.

There is a certain discomfort in the air,

but apparently nobody anticipates

the catastrophe that is impending.

Does Gaudi sense the abyss

towards which the continent is drifting?

Why is his building supposed to
be a church of conciliation?

While the 20th century is
forecasting its dark shadows,

in the house of Eusebi Guell,
the art-loving patron,

the music of Richard Wagner is much appreciated.

Wagner is triumphantly popular

among Barcelona's upper classes.

His opus is perceived

as quite the cultural and musical avant-garde.

Wagner is the acknowledged hero of Art Nouveau.

Antoni Gaudi looks up to him

with a great deal of admiration.

Gaudi was a very withdrawn person,

very shy when interacting with other people.

He only had a few friends in which he confided.

On the other hand, he never wrote about himself.

From our point of view,

there are large gaps in his private life

which still remain a mystery.

Gaudi falls in love several times.

He gets engaged at least twice,

but his wish for a family
remains unfulfilled.

God doesn't want me to marry.

Is Gaudi disappointed by life itself,

or does he perceive those
failures as a sign from above?

Is it his destiny to become God's architect?

He reads up on liturgy everyday.

By and by, he starts to withdraw
from all things secular.

He fasts regularly, sometimes in an obsessive way.

Once, it almost cost him his life.

Gaudi is commissioned

to continue the Sagrada Familia at the age of 31.

He is an ambitious young man,

but then he crosses into another realm.

The Sagrada Familia gnaws at him from the inside.

Is it Gaudi's own conviction

that makes him follow the path of expiation?

Does he sense that this task

exceeds the abilities of a single person?

Is this his way of soliciting
help from the divine?

The biblical prophets fasted as well

in order to gain clarity,

sometimes to be relieved from
the orders they had received.

In a country like Spain

where anarchism had played a role,

this is an ambitious target, a bold target.

I almost imagine that Gaudi
had a special experience.

At some point, he heard the voice,

though not the physical voice of Christ.

Live in a different way.

If you want to be religious,
you have to change your life.

I believe that he felt there
is a debt he had to pay

and that he himself had to change his life.

Does this spiritual experience

sharpen Gaudi's eye to the events of his time,

which he perceives as sinful?

Does he counter it with a monumental memorial?

On November 7th, 1893,

Barcelona undergoes
a day of horror.

An anarchist throws two bombs into the Liceu,

the musical temple of the bourgeoisie.

20 people are killed.

Gaudi visualizes his deep-felt
sentiments on the events,

cast in stone, a bomb thrower
stalking his victims.

Opposite him, a woman is
possessively clutching her purse.

The deadly sins, wrath and greed.

For Gaudi, they are a symbol
of an era going off course.

What is looming in the tensions

that can be felt in Barcelona
will on a global scale

become the seminal catastrophe
of the 20th century.

Vast numbers die on the
battlefields of World War I,

which is going to rip the entire era

from its dream of bourgeois idle,

a dream that had been dreamt by nouveau art

in such a beautiful and perfect way.

Did Gaudi suspect it?

Was his inner conflict between modernism

and the longing for order and steadiness so great

that it made him intuit the sin

which his era was ready to commit

without having any idea of the kind of apocalypse

it was tumbling into?

Gaudi is a mystic.

As such, he does not remove himself from reality

but understands that as something
that has to be changed,

a reality which he changes and is shaking the era.

The tragic week of Barcelona in 1909,

World War I, the Weimar Republic,

a difficult inter-war period.

Amidst it all, Gaudi is
building his new Jerusalem,

his Sagrada Familia

and turns it into something
that rises up to the sky

that does not descend.

Because, of course, it is God

who brings the new Jerusalem to Earth.

The new Jerusalem is a biblical image

from the Revelation of Saint John.

It describes a new city that
is sent down to Earth by God.

In this new city, peace and
justice will reign at last.

It's not about the church,

not about piety, not about contemplation.

It's about the political situation.

This church can also be
understood as an open symbol

for a more equitable political world

He breaks the first ground.

Its completion remains open.

Gaudi takes this biblical vision seriously.

Look, God's dwelling place
is now among the people,

and he will dwell with them.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or
mourning or crying or pain.

Mourning, crying, and pain

were what shaped the times of biblical John.

In an intricate way, he accuses his era.

The Revelation of Saint John

mentions the horror of Babylon.

This horror of Babylon is a code

for the contemporary, now historical Roman empire

and the Roman emperors.

It is was very common in oppositional literature

to encrypt, to encode things like that.

What literature does with words,

Gaudi did with architecture.

He, too, uses an encrypted code.

Gaudi starts having doubts

about his rather ambitious project.

Why?

Because he will experience pain and suffering.

Because he feels the effects
that fasting has on his body,

and because he will undergo
spiritual transformation.

Very slowly he reaches another dimension,

the dimension of a person who
knows poverty and humbleness.

And then at just that moment,

he attained amazing creativity.

Because creativity is the result of renunciation

not of a thirst for glory or personal pride.

Increasingly,

Gaudi is concentrating on his one task,

to translate the mission of medieval cathedrals

into a sacred place of modernism,

to reinvent the old order of things.

He talked about helicoidal,
spiral-shaped columns

with a stellar parabolic plane

which wind into opposite
directions at the same time

intersecting each other.

He said that the resulting form

was the summary of all columns that ever existed.

He claimed that the spiral shape
was essential for a column

and that nature proved it

with many trees growing in a spiral-like way.

The columns of the Sagrada Familia

do not need ornamentation.

They are the daughters of a synthesis

carrying everything inside them already.

Imagine a column with a square plinth.

Gaudi invents a column

that is the intersection of two columns.

We certainly know the baroque columns,

spiral-shaped, Solomonic columns

that can wind in either direction.

When those two columns are combined,

you have the column invented by Gaudi.

When the square plinth turns in one direction,

it generates a spiral.

When it turns in the other,
it generates another spiral.

But when it turns in both directions,

the knot slowly disappears,

and the square turns into an octagon,

then into a 16-sided polygon,

a 32-sided polygon,

a 64-sided one,

and in the end, after an infinite number of turns,

there is a circle, which we can never reach

because we cannot reach infinity.

Gaudi gave a theological meaning to these columns.

He said that they are like souls contemplating God

who is an infinite being.

Geometric shapes and coding schemes

are the indispensable elements
of order in Gaudi's system.

But why doesn't he leave behind a master plan

for the Sagrada Familia?

Why does he solely rely

on the oral transmission of a building concept

which is so complex?

Without a plan, his successors
face enormous difficulties.

Did he do it because he feared

that his work could then be taken over

by one of the two sides,

that his message to the world could be exploited?

At the turn of the century

and during a difficult political climate,

Gaudi's building now carries
an important symbolic meaning.

Some are looking forward to
the completion of the church

while others would like nothing
better than to burn it down.

Others in turn want to control it.

Was Gaudi protecting his church

so it couldn't be taken over by someone else?

Or did he simply regard it as
unnecessary to have a plan

because, to him, his vision
of the church was so clear?

While searching for any kind of system

in the construction of the columns,

the former chief architect of the Sagrada Familia

almost by accident finds a numbering system,

which seems to determine the
structure of the basilica.

From the entrance to the apse,

the church is 90 meters long.

If you divide that by 12,
the result is 7.5 meters.

So you have units of 7.5 meters each.

And then I realized

this here is 90 meters long.

The nave is 45 meters wide,

which is 90 divided by two.

The transept is 60 meters, which is 2/3,

and 1/3 would be 30.

When I realized that it's 45 meters

from the foundation to the vault,

which is 90 divided by two,

it is 15 meters to the choir,

30 to the side aisle

and 45 meters to the central aisle,

75 in the transept

and 90 in the apse.

Everything is in these proportions.

90 meters to 60 meters to 45 meters,

which means one to 2/3 to 1/2.

Why exactly did Gaudi choose these measurements?

If we look at the measurements,

90, 60, 45, one thing that
immediately comes to mind

are the associations with the temple in Jerusalem

described in the Bible.

But even more important is the
Tabernacle in the desert,

which the Israelites take
with them through the desert.

This shrine in the desert
is divided into two parts,

the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place.

If one ell is 45 centimeters,

the Holy of Holies was about
4.5 square meters big.

The Holy Place would have
been 9 meters by 4.5 meters.

So these measurements are quite similar

to those in the Sagrada Familia.

The similarity of the measurements
is even more striking

within Solomon's Temple, the
big temple in Jerusalem.

Again, this temple is divided

into the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place.

The Holy Place would have been 18 meters long.

Bear in mind that Gaudi wanted his highest tower

to be a 180 meters tall.

So this would be a direct reference to that.

The Holy of Holies, on the other hand,

was described as a cube

with measurements of nine by nine by nine meters.

So the 90 meters that we
encounter in the Sagrada Familia

again and again could very
well be a reference to that.

It is fair to assume

that Gaudi referenced these biblical measurements.

For him to know them all,

he must have studied the Bible meticulously.

The inner structure of his church

is based on the numbers 12 and 7.5.

But why those numbers?

According to the Jewish Christian numerology,

these numbers have a symbolic meaning.

The year has 12 months,

and there are 12 phases of the moon.

We have the 12 tribes of Israel,

which do carry a significant meaning

because they symbolize the people.

For Christians, the 12 tribes refer

to the numbers of apostles
since Jesus had 12 apostles.

Therefore, the number 12 stands for completeness.

But what about the number 7.5?

The number seven is also an expression

of the work of creation.

God created the world in seven days.

The number seven is, therefore, a crucial element,

which expresses the earthly ideal of being human.

The number eight, on the other hand,

is a number that refers to
the divine, the hereafter.

It is also the number that is mentioned

when Jesus was resurrected.

Sunday is also known as the eighth day,

a day which no longer takes
part in our earthly reality

but in the reality of the divine

where the former is overcome.

You could say that while the number seven

is an expression of our earthly reality

and the attempt to achieve earthly perfection,

the number eight refers to heaven.

Therefore, the visitors of the
Sagrada Familia with its 7.5

find themselves in some
kind of intermediate world.

The cathedral forms a pathway

from the earthly to the divine world.

The Sagrada Familia would not be completed

during his lifetime.

This is the gradual realization

that Gaudi must come to terms with.

It is his wish that his
successors continue his work.

Yet, he doesn't leave behind a plan.

Instead, he translates his building

into a geometrical language

where every component is expressed

by means of a geometrical shape.

His miniature models contain all the information

today's architects need.

However, Gaudi did not count
on his legacy being destroyed

in the Spanish Civil War.

Ever since, his successors
have been trying to decipher

the code to understanding Gaudi's unusual concept.

How does his secret geometrical language work?

What is the logic behind it?

He came up with the idea

to build the vaults of the Sagrada Familia

as hyperbolic-shaped paraboloids,

similar to double-curved surfaces.

But he is afraid to put his idea into practice

for one simple reason.

Something like this has never been done before.

He said that this is not a reason for not doing it

because it is the only way to achieve progress.

But before he tries out his
concept on the Sagrada Familia,

he needs to know that it actually works.

Therefore, he wants to put it to the test.

The small Church of Colonia Guell

becomes Gaudi's test laboratory.

It lies at the center of a working class quarter,

which Guell, with his humanist views,

sets up around one of his new factories.

Unlike in the slums in the industrial areas,

he wants his workers to live in decent housing.

He commissions a close colleague of Gaudi's

to built the entire complex.

Gaudi himself is given the
task of building the church.

Nature is based on an unsystematic principle

in which every single shape is unique.

Yet if you put everything together,

you create a perfectly balanced system.

This is the basic principle
which Gaudi establishes

for his important draft of the Sagrada Familia.

Could this be the explanation

for why there couldn't have
been a construction plan?

It would have meant the formulation

of contradicting hypotheses,
an unsystematic system.

Gaudi sees his building as
a dedication to creation

and as a suitable apology for his era.

This is the mission he pursues
with his last great project,

the Church of Colonia Guell.

Once again, he will be very
much ahead of his time.

His technical visions are part
of a theological mission.

Double-curved surfaces form to a straight lines,

the first hyperbolic paraboloids

in the history of architecture.

The sacred interior made of
inclined and curved surfaces

looks like it was knocked out of a mound.

At the same time, it appears to be light-weighted

and somewhat floating.

Gaudi develops his own technique

for the eccentric little church.

This method is actually over 200 years old.

His discovery was this.

When he used the catenary, that
is a shape forming itself,

an arch with only tensile forces present.

If I turn it upside down,

I get an arch with only
compressive forces present.

Tension, upside down, compression.

That is his simple principle.

It only becomes complicated
when I put weights on it.

Or when I construct a
complicated support structure

like this one, a cross vault
or this complicated structure

as Gaudi designed for the church.

And the result is an entanglement of forces

having effects on each other.

Over the course of 10 years,

the visionary develops a gigantic suspended model

of the Church of Colonia Guell,

19 feet long, 13 feet high.

His technique is unique.

Small weights are tied to threads,

proportionally equivalent to the weight

each building component is designed to carry.

The tension created by the weights

gives the threads their spatial shape.

Their positions and force ratios

correspond to those on the future building.

The threads show the arched lines

as determined by the forces.

Upside down, the model reveals

the building's logical construction lines.

Gaudi's suspended model does not withstand

the turmoil of time,

but Professor Graefe and his team of scientists

managed to reconstruct this model

that is unique in the history of architecture.

How could this snarl of threads, however,

have developed into a church?

The first step is to take
a look at what Gaudi did.

Here you see his historical model

with an employee standing next to it.

He hung blankets in there

to make the structure more discernible,

to prevent the eye from looking
right though the threads.

Here you see it all turned upside down,

and this is a picture over which he painted

the front view of the church.

Gaudi's over-paintings,

the recreated suspended model,

and the few realized parts of the building

are the basis for a 3D model

of the never built upper part of the church.

In a research project,

scientists from the Universities
of Innsbruck and Moscow

recreate this small jewel of architecture,

which existed merely in Gaudi's head.

The Crypt has been called,

completely misunderstood in the literature.

It was called bizarre, crazy,
wild, notions like that.

For a long time, experts did not understand

the origins of these forms

and the kind of constructive
consistency behind it.

It looks like a little sister,

the Church of the Colonia Guell

next to the ultra-large Sagrada Familia.

And yet, this small building
contains all the innovation

which will determine the
construction of the Sagrada Familia

in a highly complex way.

The geometrical forms Gaudi gets out of nature

are the building blocks of creation

and as such, the basic element
of the Sagrada Familia,

a building of biblical dimensions.

In 1915, budget problems freeze the construction

of the small church.

Guell is already seriously ill.

When he dies, the project is terminated for good.

For Gaudi, this means giving
up his most unique project.

After 10 years of planning and
six years of construction,

it is a catastrophe for the architect.

On his search for new shapes,

Gaudi delves into the Gothic period,

the era of great cathedrals.

He feels that the system of struts

that is indispensable for this constructive form

is an uninspired auxiliary structure, a crutch.

He refers to the Gothic
style as industrial art

because it repeats elements
without considering proportions.

In order to hide shapes that
are structurally wrong,

ornaments are put in place as a distraction.

He compares this technique
to a hunchback strategy,

who dresses up smartly in order to hide his hunch.

People still see the hunch,

but they act as if they didn't notice.

And really, Gaudi finds a solution

that does not require struts.

He observes someone strolling,

tilting his cane so he can
lean against it to rest.

This noticeably increases his stability.

So Gaudi tilts his columns as well.

Gaudi planned a structure of supporting trees

of tilted columns.

It is a perfect balanced structure.

However, it demands that the weight concentrate

in the upper part of the column.

Gaudi decides to leave the
spaces between the columns empty

in order to make the arches
lighter and to let in the light.

The light can shine through
rooflights and skylights.

The skylights can certainly
be cylindrical like this one.

But to better catch the light,

the skylights should not be vertical.

It should have a tilt that
matches the rays of light.

This shape is better suited to catch the light

and to disperse it in the interior.

This is the hyperboloid.

All arches, skylights, and
windows of the Sagrada Familia

are hyperboloids.

When you look at the arches
and the church windows,

you will see many star-like shapes,

many elements with a circle in the center

and star-like shapes

that develop from those straight lines

in either direction of rotation.

Starting from each point,

there is a straight line to either direction

touching the central circle.

Well, that is Gaudi's secret.

The arches and the church windows

are the cross sections of the hyperboloids.

It took a long time

for the principles of the Sagrada
Familia to be understood.

The image of the heavenly Jerusalem

clearly conveys the message

that no matter what man will start making,

it will never be completed.

Perfection and completion will only be attained

in the end of time.

God will complete and perfect things.

That is true for this church
just as it is for world peace.

In 1914, World War I breaks out.

Spain does not participate in it.

Gaudi spends the last 12 years of his life

fully working on the Sagrada Familia.

Finally, he even installs his workroom

on the construction site

like he wants to become one with his church.

It may not be painful to us,

and we may not complain that I
cannot complete the temple.

If anything, this will make it even more sublime.

He ended the way he started,
as a lonely person.

I wouldn't say he was embittered,

but he was a sad man, a loner,

a man of few words who took flight from things.

He liked to shut himself off in his inner life,

who had a very profound inner life.

I truly believe that.

Every evening, Gaudi visits

the Church of Saint Felip Neri.

It is unknown whether he
went there for confession,

for worship, or for silent contemplation.

Maybe it was the evening light
above the Mediterranean Sea

that drew him to this area.

He says that he has to see the ocean

time and again.

For him, the ocean is the only element

in which he feels that all
three dimensions are combined.

Its surface reflects the sky.

Looking through the surface,

you can see the ocean floor and the movements.

Gaudi was of the opinion

that man takes precedence over machines.

However, his way of thinking had its disadvantages

when he was walking through the streets.

He walked seven miles every day,

thinking about his problems
on the construction site

and not paying attention to the traffic.

He felt that drivers had to stop

when he wanted to cross the street

instead of him having to stop for the cars.

So he had a couple of accidents,

the last of which was fatal.

In the evening of June 7th, 1926,

Gaudi is hit by a tramway

on his way to the Church of Saint Felip Neri.

The most beautiful truth
that I've discovered

is that while Gaudi left the church unfinished,

the truth is that the church formed Gaudi

as a human being in an outstanding way.

To put it differently, Gaudi built this church,

but the church formed Gaudi perfectly.

There's nothing more beautiful,

and that's the answer to why we build this church,

and we are glad that the church forms us.

What I want to convey to my coworkers with this

is that we do not simply build a church.

We also build ourselves.

The Sagrada Familia

draws more than three million visitors every year.

Many of them belong to religions
other than Christianity.

Many don't usually ever enter a church.

The building's aura makes them feel

like they are in a place of immense meaning.

Maybe that is because hardly any person but Gaudi,

any city but Barcelona,

any building but the Sagrada Familia

offers such a direct juxtaposition of contrasts.

A brilliant paradox,

this might be the secret of the Sagrada Familia.

We are at the center of the city's turmoil.

We are amidst the people's pain and suffering,

their longing, their joys.

That makes the Sagrada Familia

an utterly urban place of worship.

The city is the element that
dominates the global world.

Gaudi creates an urban place of worship

because he anticipates this global world.

That makes him a prophet.

The Sagrada Familia,

the expiatory temple of modernism

has been polarizing right from the start.

But maybe this church is not
looking for anything other

than to be a symbol of harmony in a violent world.

The question is whether staying unfinished

might actually help it fulfill its mission

of depicting the heavenly Jerusalem.