Gaudi and the mystery of the encarnation (the mysteries of the crypt of the colonia Güell)

Abstract

The church of the Colonia Güell was the first significant building constructed with the use —in a three dimensional model— of funicular lines as a means for determining stable forms: a system conceived by Gaudí as a mere instrument of verification of his structural intuition and, above all, of the viability of his plastic intention. This is the thesis of the authors of this article, based on the first phase of the studies which are to document the restoration of the crypt —the only part of the building which was built— and reveal some of the mysteries of this architectural derelict which feed all sorts of fantasies and imaginations. One of these mysteries is the stability of the cript. If it was constructed partially following the funicular model studied by Gaudí for the complete building, and taking into consideration that, natural I y, it was to be balanced whole, the constructed part must be unbalanced given that its current loads do not correspond to what the model foresaw. However, evidently the structure is stable as it has been standing for more than ninety years. A reasonable doubt still persists with respect to the stability of the complete building once concluded following the funicular model. The first conclusions here set down will be no more than hypotheses until new studies in course (being carried out by the authors for the Diputación of Barcelona), with the modeling of the finite elements, shed new light. All together, any reflections on the construction of the crypt will always suffer from a lack of documentary material. This lost documentation would have explained one of the essential keys of the building: the criteria which governed in the step from the string to its materialization, that is, its encarnation.