Antoni Gaudí

In 1883, the 31-year-old Gaudí took over the Sagrada Família. For the next 43 years he poured himself into this expiatory church, living on-site for the final 12. Gaudí knew he wouldn't see it finished, so he left detailed plaster models and geometric drawings for successors to follow.

The design evolved from neo-Gothic into Gaudí's own "natural Gothic." The Nativity façade teems like a tree of life; the Passion façade is stark as bare bone. Inside, forest-like columns branch overhead; the central tower will reach 172.5 meters — slightly lower than Barcelona's Montjuïc hill, because Gaudí believed "the work of man should not surpass the work of God."

Construction continues today, with the main structure expected to be completed in 2026 — the centenary of Gaudí's death. The building has become architecture's most enduring creative act and its most moving testament to the aesthetics of the unfinished.

Gaudí's genius is equally visible in housing and urban space. Casa Batlló's façade evokes dragon scales and bones, its roof a dragon's spine — the legend of Saint George and the dragon becomes architecture. Casa Milà's undulating stone walls and sculptural chimneys turn an apartment block into habitable sculpture. Park Güell's kaleidoscopic mosaic bench and gingerbread gatehouses, originally a garden-city project, became one of the world's most joyful public spaces.

Gaudí's palette comes almost entirely from material itself: colored ceramic shards (recycled from factory waste), limestone, basalt, iron. He let materials speak, unadorned, unpretending. Trencadís is both a continuation of Mediterranean mosaic tradition and an early practice of resource reuse. Each shard's position was decided on-site by craftsmen, giving Gaudí's architecture both grand geometric order and improvisational handmade warmth.