Antoni Gaudi

Barcelona is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of its most famous architect and designer. Here are the best Gaudi sites on the web
1. Many of Barcelona's buildings designed by Gaudi will be open to the public for the first time in years.

2. Gaudi - emphatically not a subscriber to the "less is more" school - was at the forefront of Spain's art nouveau movement at the turn of the 19th century.

3. At the time, Barcelona was thriving, thanks to the health of its textile industry. Many of its richest citizens enjoyed allying themselves to artists, intellectuals and other celebrities of the time. As a result, sponsorship money was thrown at Gaudi, but his first big architectural project was a workers' cooperative housing project.

4. But his social conscience didn't stop him from creating buildings so gaudy they would have made Gianni Versace blush.

5. Common themes in Gaudi's work include an asymmetry far ahead of its time.

6. He also made a name for himself early on for synthesising tradition with over-the-top creative ornamentation.

7. Early on in his career, his detractors were cruel. One critic in the 1950s described his facades as "tortures of the imagination, foetuses in stone, bulbous obscenities".

8. Gaudi's attention to detail may have stemmed from childhood rheumatic problems that made him miss a lot of school. He spent a lot of time studying animals, plants and stones.

9. He probably would have loved the fact that people are now using his designs as computer wallpaper.

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