Josep Maria Bocabella i Verdaguer founded the Spiritual Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph in 1866, at a time when the phenomenon of de-Christianisation was being driven by the Industrial Revolution and social change. From 1874 onwards, the association considered the construction of a new expiatory temple, following the trend of other religious associations that were erecting temples in Europe, such as those in Rome (Sacro Cuore de Gesù, 1870) or Paris (Basilica of the Sacred Court of Montmatre, 1873). The temple was to be a copy of the Basilica of Loreto (Marche, Italy), including a reproduction of the Holy House of Nazareth, which is where the Holy Family lived and to whom the Temple is dedicated. To build such a monumental work, the association commissioned the project from the diocesan architect Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano. The renowned architect does not agree to make a copy of an existing project and carries out a neo-Gothic style with a Latin cross project with considerable dimensions (44x97m), a large dome above the transept and a tower above the main façade, with heights of 80 and 100 metres respectively. These dimensions show us that it was not a conventional church, as the project surpassed the cathedral of Barcelona itself in terms of height, where the current subsequent dome only reaches 70 meters. On March 19, 1882, Saint Joseph's day, the patron saint of the association, work began on the crypt and at the beginning of the following year, when the walls were halfway up, discrepancies arose over the construction system. The Josephine association wanted to execute it in a more economical way, which eventually led to Villar's resignation.

This is Gaudí's first commission, having just finished his studies. The house consists of two floors with a low ceiling which house the main floor and the bedrooms, and a much higher attic under a multi-slope roof. The treatment of the built factory combines exposed stone and brick masonry, which is drawn and organised according to horizontal rows, and vertical elements of ceramic tile, which always draw a draftboard pattern and incorporate the corner tribunes and their elements of support. The house was conceived as a large optical device linked to the garden and the skewed views from the street.

It is the Baron de Güell’s main urban residence, built on the site left by two old apartment buildings, at a peak for the city’s culture due to the imminence of the first Universal Exposition. The whole organism revolves around a large central space located on the main floor, with a height above the roof, where all the cultural and social life takes place. Gaudí creates an unusual vertical order, where the four floors above the street are expressed on the façade in six different orders, also broken horizontally. At the entrance, two inverted catenaries channel the differentiated access to the garages, the stables and the large hall. The palace is conceived as a unitary space experienced through the staircase, which ascends around the great hall until it reaches the bedrooms. Gaudí’s respect for the medieval urban palace typology is obvious, although it is full of a very sacred sense of space.

Gaudí is required in this case to completely transform the image of an already existing house, while freely incorporating new structural concepts, naturalistic references, all kinds of symbolism and abstract ornamentation. The addition of a new floor allows the façade to be crowned asymmetrically, taking into account the presence of the neighbouring Amatller House, which already existed at the time. The main floor incorporates naturalism in the supporting structure itself, while the attics allow the introduction of the parabolic vaults, already rehearsed previously. The collaboration of Josep Maria Jujol brings greater freedom in working with the materials and in the intensity of the effects. Both façades, front and back, undulate like two curtains. We can consider it as Gaudí's first mature work, where he achieves a surprising synthesis between the structural materiality of the building and the dreamlike nature of the multiple suggestions that we can find everywhere.

This is Gaudí’s latest civil work, in which he places full emphasis on the experimentation with the structure and opts for risky and well-differentiated solutions from traditional procedures. The load-bearing straight feet are made of limestone from Garraf, combined with metallic elements, and are dimensioned and configured according to the casuistry of their specific position. The slabs are made of metal beams, which follow an irregular order according to the configuration of the floor. The façades on the street merge with the perimeter pillars in a monolithic and self-supporting system. Gaudí proposes to detach the forms from their material content and to look for a synthesis between the abstraction and the evocation of the elements of nature. This led him to turn the building into a large monument dedicated to the Virgin, which was to crown the house as if it were just a pedestal. The help of a naval engineer or the shapes suggested on the deck reveal a Gaudí forerunner of modern architecture, interested in freeing himself from the rows of masonry, orders or the weight of building materials. The Pedrera is a completely unfinished work that solves every spatial and constructive challenge through unpublished and sometimes incomprehensible solutions.

Gaudí worked on the project for ten years, and the works did not start until 1908. It is a kind of laboratory in the middle of nature where Gaudí alternates his discoveries with the works of La Pedrera, the Sagrada Família and the Park Güell. The crypt consists of a structure of inclined pillars of basalt stone, with a monolithic shaft, prepared to support the church that was intended to be built on top. The roof is formed by a complex system of thin brick catenaries that follow a very irregular geometry, guided by numerous allusions to the animal and plant world. The first rows of the wall system, darker, are followed by reddish rows, and the church was to continue with greenish tones and finally blue, the same chromatic order of the forest that surrounds it. Gaudí worked with catenary models to trace the vaults that were to complete the whole, although the crypt is the result of working on site with all kinds of found and recycled materials, such as window bars or waste bricks. Gaudí ends up printing numerous religious and Catalan symbols on all surfaces, such as the four cardinal virtues represented in the mosaic above the entrance door.

The park is the result of the purchase by Barcelona City Council of the urbanisation of a luxury neighborhood designed by Gaudí and promoted by Eusebi Güell that never came to be. What can currently be visited are the landscaping of sixty undeveloped plots at the foot of Mount Pelada, with magnificent views of Barcelona, and the common parts of the project: the paths, access, market, central square. Gaudí urbanises the mountain with streets that follow the minimum sloping lines and four bridges built with material from the clearing of the plots. The retaining porch walls inside which can be circulated, covered with local stone, are exceptional. Both the bridges and the porch are crowned by unique columns crowned in turn by planters where agaves are planted. The heart of the urbanisation had to be an elevated square that instead of a perimeter railing has a corrugated bench designed and built with prefabricated concrete by his collaborator Josep Maria Jujol, finished with some breakwaters that are worth discovering in detail. Below the square is a hypostyle room that was to house the market, with twisted columns to work with as little effort as possible. The columns are empty and below them is a water tank that should cover the entire park. Some are removed in order to make room for larger stops and are replaced by medallions, also designed by Jujol. The ensemble is accessed by an imperial staircase that has, on the axis of symmetry, a spectacular dragon made of trencadís that has become one of Barcelona’s landmarks. The fence that guards the park at the entrance, finished with two asymmetrical pavilions, is equally remarkable. One of the pavilions currently houses the Gaudí Museum.

THE TEMPLE’S BEGINNINGS AND GAUDÍ’S PROJECT After the resignation of Villar, Joan Martorell, who advised the Josefina Association and was one of the most prestigious architects of the time, proposed Antoni Gaudí as a continuation of the works begun. At the time, Gaudí was a young architect, with 31 years of age, and he accepted the position of managing director on November 3, 1883. Gaudí continued the works designed by Villar and, as he gained prestige as an architect - and at the same time the confidence of the Josephine association -, he gradually transformed the initial project to the point of reaching a large, monumental temple around 1890. The new conception of the building is no longer limited to a typical Latin cross church. It increases the scale and projects a main body of five naves with a transept of three, and a monumental façade at each end, dedicated to the Nativity - east transept -, the Passion - west transept - and the Glory, located at the foot of the main nave. To join the three façades, there is a perimeter cloister, which surrounds the nave and the surrounding island, with a building on each corner dedicated to sacristies, a baptistery and a chapel of the Sacrament and Penance. The new building has a great symbolic value as a manifestation of the Christian faith - which is inseparable from art and architecture - and gains in verticality. The three façades contain four towers each, about 100 metres high, dedicated to the twelve apostles. In the centre of the transept is a large dome, consisting of six towers even taller than the previous ones, dedicated to the Virgin Mary - on the apse -, the four Evangelists - one on each corner of the transept - and the large central tower of Jesus Christ, about 170 feet. Gaudí devoted the rest of his life to the design and construction of the Temple, and exclusively from 1914, when he ceased his professional activity outside the Sagrada Família. During Gaudí’s lifetime, the crypt, the façade of the apse and much of the Nativity Façade were built.

After Gaudí’s death, the architect Domènec Sugrañes oversaw the direction of the works. He was Gaudí’s main collaborator at the time and he directed the works on the Façade of the Nativity - of which Gaudí had only seen a bell tower completely finished - which were completed before the outbreak of the Civil War. Mentally affected by the destruction of the Sagrada Familia workshop at the beginning of the Civil War, Sugrañes passed away in 1938.

After the end of the war, Francesc de Paula Quintana, who had been Gaudí’s assistant architect, and later Sugrañes, took over the position of chief architect. Once the war was over, the new Temple board focused on the restoration of the affected areas (crypt, lower part of the apse and the Nativity Facade and the schools) and the recovery of Gaudí's workshop and project, collecting photographs and plans - published before the fire in Gaudí's biographies and books on the Sagrada Família - and recovering the plaster models damaged during the war, generated by very precise geometries. The construction of the Façade of the Passion began in 1954, which Gaudí described in a very detailed elevation plan, and which he had explained to his disciples. In the transept of the Passion, Quintana he erected the double-turn column dedicated to the diocese of Barcelona, following the geometric procedure devised by Gaudí, which was the first column inside the temple and served as a model for the rest.

The architects Isidre Puig Boada and Lluis Bonet i Garí, who had regularly visited Gaudí in the last stage of his life and had worked on the development of the work under the direction of Francesc de Paula Quintana, became the successors after the death of the latter. At this stage, the architectural part of the Façade of the Passion is completed, except for the upper porch, and a large part of the documentation and models that will allow the continuation of the works is collected and studied.

La vil·la, situada al costat del poble de Constantí, és una construcció agrícola del segle II, ampliada en el segle IV. Fa uns anys un equip d’arqueòlegs almenys hi van fer uns treballs de restauració, principalment a la cúpula de mosaics que cobreix la sala central. De l’edifici només queden en peu dues sales. La nostra feina era organitzar un itinerari, avui inexistent, on s’expliqués la història i la recuperació de la vil·la. Un magatzem lateral va ser lloc d’acollida: una petita sala de projeccions i uns panells de vidre amb fotografies i textos. Un petit conducte lateral ens porta a la sala de la cúpula: un llum de peu i un petit sofà per poder mirar mig ajaguts (a la romana) i amb l’ajut d’uns petits “impertinents”, els mosaics de la cúpula. A l’última sala, la quadrilobular, s’hi exposaven peces trobades en les excavacions.

Francesc de Paula Cardoner i Blanch, who had worked under the orders of Puig Boada and Bonet Garí on the construction of the Façade of the Passion, became the principal architect between 1983 and 1985. Under his direction, the construction of the windows in the sides of the naves began. In addition to construction, Cardoner devoted many years of his life to the study of the original models of the project -including previous versions of the project that Gaudí ruled out-, establishing an important classification of the pieces that have later served the generations to deepen the knowledge of the project.

Among the works of art, we can highlight the Façade of the Passion’s sculptural ensemble, made by Josep Maria Subirachs and declared BCIN in the category of Historic Monument in 2019, together with the rest of his work in the Temple. In 1986, Josep Maria Subirachs i Sitjar was commissioned to create the sculptural program for the Façade of the Passion. The sculpture of Subirachs was to express the rawness of the Passion and Christ’s Death, in line with the naked and angular architecture designed by Gaudí on this façade, and in contrast to that of the Nativity. Subirachs developed the sculptural ensemble of the façade located in the porch - including the bronze doors with the Gospels - and the sculptures of the four apostles located in the bell towers up until 2005. The artist's work is completed with the seven bronze doors on the façade of the Glory -with the full text and the seven requests of the Our Father-, the Saint George inside the basilica, and Gaudí’s bust, made until 2011.