European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 17, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                A a. A a1 a a a v. A a a a a is amps Peter Jaeger the Sagrada Familia Church has Long inspired either passionate support or  s by Edward Schumacher new York times the wooden scaffolding rattled 40 feet above the ground As it surrounded passion facade of Antoni saudi s Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona Spain but Joseph Maria Subi Rachs his Boot aces undone and his corduroys heavy with Rock dust was impervious As he admired his own Stone creation on the facade a faceless statue of Jesus on a horizontal steel Cross. A. Quot Tremenda Tremenda the sculptor said Quot this is history. This is adventure Quot. But in other quarters of this Mediterranean City Subi rach s efforts Are considered something else. Quot a barbarity said Oriol Bohigas the City s former chief planner. Quot everything they Are doing is  Quot a mistake of architecture and religion Quot said the catalan Painter Antoni Tapies. Quot Disneyland a a sculptor Xavier Corbero said with a snort. Subi rach s modern sculptures Are part of an architectural project that has polarized Barcelona s intellectual  project is intended to Complete Gaudi s Sagrada Familia holy family one of the world s most celebrated unfinished works. But vitriolic debate about the construction work has broken out All Over Barcelona. Last summer nearly 1,000 opponents of the work demonstrated at the Church maintaining that it should remain unfinished. The Sagrada Familia a soaring gloriously exaggerated Art Nouveau Church that is taller than St. Peter s Basilica in Rome was Only a Quarter done when Gaudi was killed by a Streetcar in 1926. But that Quarter included a facade an apse and a crypt that have enchanted a a a hundreds  of visitors a year. So distinctive is the building s Silhouette that it has come to symbolize Barcelona. The Sagrada Familia had been under construction in fits and starts since Gaudi s death but recently an architectural team headed by Jordi Bonet the 64-year-old son of an earlier chief architect who had studied under Gaudi has resumed work in Earnest. Walls Are taking shape and columns being erected with such 1 determination that the Nave is scheduled to be completed in three years. Already Gaudi s original work May be less than half of what is now standing. As the sculptures steadily go up the criticism seems to have taken on a new urgency. At the heart of the dispute lie two questions is an architect an artist and is his work inviolate supporters of the project say Gaudi expected his Church to. Be finished and functional. Critics maintain that because Gaudi s detailed plans were burned in the Spanish civil War the current work is based on conjecture and is destroying the integrity of an artistic treasure. Complicating matters is the fact that the Church is being financed with Public. A donations raising such questions As when a Church becomes a Monument and what rights the Public has in the project. Gaudi worked around the turn of the Century to develop a highly personal answer to the tired revival styles and eclecticism of 19th Century Western architecture. /. Barcelona Jong an artistically Fertile City was then emerging along with Paris and Vienna As a great Center of Art Nouveau but Gaudi transcended that decorative movement which emphasized free. Expression and sinuous forms recalling nature. Gaudi moved away from Flat horizontal and vertical surfaces toward parabolic Arches and hyperbolic vaults and slanted helical columns. Like his american contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright Gaudi was concerned with space Light and the surrounding environment but his solutions were dramatically his own. For the Sagrada Familia Gaudi 1. Envisioned three imposing facades the nativity which was nearing completion when he died the passion depicting the death of Jesus and the main Entrance Wall the Gloria which would show the resurrection. Crowning Italy was to be a 525-foot cupola. Gaudi s dreamlike nativity facade consists of four 350-foot-tall parabolic Spires with polychrome crosses at their tips he integrated the shapes and textures of nature and the Stone base seethes with carvings of primal vines and animals. The Sagrada Familia was controversial from the beginning Gaudi was / commissioned in 1883 not by the archdiocese but by a bookseller who had purchased a huge lot to build a grandiose Church with Public donations. Driving the project was a revival of catalan nationalism and a romantic idea of recapturing the spirit of the Middle Ages when the great cathedrals of Europe were built with Public support. Many of Barcelona s clerics alarmed that the size of Gaudi s Church would overwhelm the City s gothic Cathedral opposed the project. Civic leaders hissed at its strange style. Gaudi a religious Mystic worked on the Church Oft and on for 43 years obsessively overseeing details and making changes to apply his latest theories. He lived at the. Church in his last years anti went begging door to door to raise Money to keep the building going. So possessed was he with  he saw As his masterpiece that Gaudi once an impeccably dressed and intimidating Man turned ascetic and frail. When he was run Over bythe Streetcar he was so shabby that he was taken to a pauper s Hospital where he died the next Day. He was 74. After his death saudi s assistants built. The undulating Spires of the second facade the passion which was begun in the 1950s and completed in 1976. Their work prompted a 1953 manifesto signed by some of the most illustrious figures in Art and Archit cure among them be Corbusier Mies Van Der Rohe and Walter Gropius. The manifesto demanded that construction Stop and that what Gaudi had left be preserved As a Monument. In 1985, Bonet took Over the project. He built computer models from Gaudi s preliminary plans and from reconstructions of models. To Cut costs and save time Bonet jus cd computers to guide the cutting of Gaudiss revolutionary columns which twist counterclockwise and Divide and increase in number As they Rise. In addition Bonet is substituting reinforced Concrete for Sandstone in. Interior Walls and columns the Concrete is specially made with crushed Sandstone to match the building s color. A Bonet defends his modifications. Quot Gaudi liked to use the most modern technology available he said. Bui critics counter that the use of reinforced Concrete was common in Gaudi s Day and was rejected because the architect found Slone closer to nature and god Quot Gaudi thought Rock was important for a Church said Ignacio Sola Morales who recently rebuilt Mies Van Der Rohe s 1928 world s fair German Pavilion in Barcelona. Quot the use of Concrete is an evident / falsification that goes against his  Subi Rachs makes no pretence that he is trying to copy Gaudi Quot my sculptures have to do with my personality and the modern style of the times Quot he said. Known for Large abstract works Subi Rachs 62, was commissioned three a years ago to create 100 sculptures depicting the last two Days of Christ s life for the passion facade. He expects to be finished by the year 2000. The Centrepiece is a crucified faceless Jesus. His face1 appears about 15 feet lower on the facade on the skirt of a figure of Veronica who had wiped his brow. Naysayers contend that Gaudi s unfinished Church should not. Be touched any More than an unfinished painting would be. Quot it s impossible to replicate Gaudi s spirit Quot said Daniel Giralt Mirade director of the City s museum of modern Art. Many other artistic leaders demand construction Stop and saudi s work be preserved perhaps within Glass Walls. A supporters say a building is not a painting. Quot you  t leave a building unfinished said Joan Basse Goda who holds the Gaudi chair  architectural school at the polytechnic University of Catalonia. Quot if the architect Dies the project does t  january 17, 199/ stripes Magarine 3