“It is a major misunderstanding to see Gaudi only as a decorative artist who created distinctive forms. He was an architect who experimented with how to make architecture more rational and dynamic within the conditions of his time.”

Few architects are as readily paired with the label ‘genius’ as Antoni Gaudi (1852~1926). He is also one of the most beloved architects today, to the point that people plan trips to Spain to see his buildings. Yet that fame sometimes confines Gaudi within a narrow image. Doors and windows of all different shapes, columns leaning this way and that, brilliant colors, and strange ornament have made him look like a stubborn craftsperson who pushed his own world against the monster of industrialization known as mass production.

Published in Korea for the first time ahead of the 100th anniversary of the death of Gaudi on the 10th, <Reus Manuscript> (Deulnyeok) is a book that overturns such assumptions. It gathers the contents of notes Gaudi kept from 1873, when he studied architecture in Barcelona, to 1879, the year after he graduated. Because the manuscript has been preserved in a museum in Reus, known as the hometown of Gaudi, it came to be called the ‘Reus Manuscript’. As the studio of Gaudi was destroyed by arson during the Spanish Civil War, this is effectively the only surviving autograph notebook.

Contrary to epithets such as ‘magician of curves’ and ‘architect of God’, the Gaudi in the book is closer to a young architect who ponders the city and industrial production, and the issues of structure and construction. Lee Byung-gi (46), a Gaudi scholar and head of ArchiTwins who translated the book, said in an interview with the Kyunghyang Shinmun on the 4th, “I have always wanted to rephrase the label ‘genius’ that is attached to Gaudi,” and “He was an architect who kept experimenting and evolving, and <Reus Manuscript> shows the multifaceted side of Gaudi as a ‘modern architect’.”

Lee, who like Gaudi attended Barcelona Polytechnic University, originally studied modern architecture. “I expected that many people would ask about Gaudi when I returned to Korea, but I actually did not know him well. I too vaguely regarded him as an old-fashioned, craft-centered architect.” When he raised this with his advisor, the professor said, “I regard Gaudi as a modern architect,” and recommended that he read <Reus Manuscript>. Lee said, “Only after reading it did I realize that Gaudi was someone who had thought more deeply than anyone about the situation of contemporary architecture and its solutions.”

In <Reus Manuscript>, Gaudi surveys everything from city streetlights and public buildings to demographic composition, mass production, and industrial design. Rather than an Art Nouveau architect who imitated the forms of nature, he comes across as a young architect who sought to answer the demands of a changing era through architecture. Yet this is not immediately convincing if one looks only at the actual buildings of Gaudi.

Lee says, “We need to look at the historical conditions in which Gaudi found himself.” In the 1880s, when he began to work in earnest, steel, electric lighting, and mass production were spreading across Europe, but architecture still remained within the order of Neoclassicism and the structures of stone and brick. In Spain, the first reinforced-concrete buildings appeared around 1900, when Gaudi was entering his fifties. He sensed the new age, but he was wedged into a transitional period in which the materials and production systems to realize it were not yet fully in place. After his death, as modernist architecture represented by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe rose to prominence, reinforced-concrete structures and curtain walls established themselves as the language of new architecture, and the architecture of Gaudi came to look even more alien.

Lee explained, “The innovation of Gaudi was to push the maximum within the limits of stone construction.” A representative case is ornament. The ornamental elements in the buildings of Gaudi look brilliant and peculiar, but in fact they were devices to lessen the weight of stone columns and walls and to realize dynamism and lightness. As his work moved into later years, the ornament became simpler and the structure clearer. The sculpture of the basilica too is not mere trimming; it should be seen within the iconographic tradition of religious architecture that conveyed the contents of the Bible to those who could not read. Lee said, “The phrase ‘the straight line is human and the curve is divine’ has been consumed without context,” adding, “Even forms that look curved, like the ceiling of the Holy Family Basilica (Sagrada Familia), are in fact curved surfaces composed through straight lines.”

The Holy Family Basilica that Gaudi took on in 1883 is the work in which his architectural innovations are concentrated. On the 10th, the 100th anniversary of his death, Pope Leo XIV will bless the central ‘Tower of Jesus Christ’, which rises to 172.5 m. With this tower complete, the basilica has become the tallest church in the world. However, as the ‘Glory Facade’ that will serve as the main entrance and surrounding works remain, overall completion is deferred.

Lee believes that the era of Gaudi resembles today. As in the late 19th century, when industrialization and new technologies surged, technologies such as smartphones and artificial intelligence are now rapidly changing the texture of life. He said, “Because people find dynamism and change beautiful, the architecture of Gaudi does not stay as a legacy of the past but retains contemporaneity.”

If you go to see Gaudi architecture in Barcelona, where should you pay closest attention? The standard course is Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, Casa Batllo, and Casa Mila, but Lee recommends the Guell Palace. “To feel the completeness of Gaudi architecture and the density of its materials, I hope you will see the Guell Palace. It is truly a ‘well-made’ work of architecture.” The reason Gaudi remains loved is not only his captivating forms. He was an architect who ceaselessly renewed himself in the face of a changing age.