Sagrada Familia-By Rick Dikilous

Sagrada Familia is Rick Dikilous. And although Rick did not create the Gaudi's masterpiece Sagrada Familia, he is correct in saying that it's ridiculous. Said to be the Catechism in stone, Gudi gave 40 years of his life to building the church in his Modernista style before being killed by a bus in 1926. Work began in 1882 on the massive church which tells the story of Christ's birth, life, death and as well as other Catholic stories. There is something different and metaphorical on every piece of stone. Like this colored glass window, which is only colored glass in the entire church, to represent the birth of Christ. I think Gudi and I would have gotten along (except he was a hermit and didn't talk to many people except a mortician, more later), he loved nature and modeled much of his style after God's created earth. Like this turtle which when it rains acts as a drain spout. During riots in 19, Gudi written plans were destroyed as well as all his models. After the Spanish Civil war, local architects reconstructed some of his models but many of his plans were burned or lost. As of 1967, other architects will have worked on Sagrada Familia for longer then Gudi himself. And they've kinda had to guess on some stuff. One archetcet has caught some flak for designing a section of the church that is different from Gudi's style so everyone will know thats is him and not Gudi. He designed all the stations of the cross including the metal door emblazoned with Jesus as well as other names (Joseph, Mary, etc. not Mildred or Hank) and symbols. The construction cranes have long been just as permanent as the towers themselves. Seems they'll be there a little longer as the projected finish date is , good luck.

So Gudi was super committed to his church and he needed many models for the sculptures on the exterior towers. He had a friend in town that was a morticion who would let him come in and check the bodies out. If the recently deceased fit Gudi's need, he'd make a mask out of their cold dead face to be forever entombed at Sagrada Familia, not a bad way to be remembered.

Check out what Gudi did to test the forces on the pillars before laying even one stone for the church. Out of string and weight specific sandbags he put together this model in an abandoned warehouse. After stringing all this together he calculated all the weights and stresses on the strings, with math or some crap, but he wasn't finished. Then he took a picture of the model and spun it upside down in order to achieve the desired effect. He created an upside-down version of Sagrada Familia out of string an small sandbags- Rick Dikilous.