A Sin City Saints
Vic I travel often, both for family reasons and because it is one of my favorite cities in Catalonia. I am literally at home walking through the streets full of medieval trade TIGHT so crowded market on Saturday you can hardly move in them in single file. The city has a very peculiar idiosyncrasy: simply enter the municipal website and take a look at the full composition. The local bourgeoisie and the nobility are closed tight. It is difficult to know and be known, and interventions in the old town, except for a couple or three exceptions, are timid, conservative and reactionary. It was not always so.
Vic is often called the Holy City, I have never known if the novel by Miquel Llor (Laura in the City of Saints, written in Catalan. I do not know if there is a Castilian translation) or if it already includes a title prior to running for the environment. 40% of the old town is still owned by the Church. It will be a church. One day my uncle told me he had two hundred. I tend to believe what he tells me, but that day I raised my eyebrows. After walking the streets around the cathedral, I counted forty in less than ten minutes and stopped, reaffirming faith in my uncle and hallucinating with what is still this city.
We
in 1910, the centenary of the birth of Jaume Balmes. Torras i Bages is bishop of Vic and prepares for the commemoration of this event. Gaudí suffers a nervous breakdown (then called "cerebral anemia") that has taken him to take a rest period, then only known cure for this disease, in this city. The intensity of work in his studio has made this not the first, and the succession of them undiagnosed, no drug therapy, have affected their physical and mental health. Still, Torras i Bages, do not know if in an act of selfishness or a therapeutic act, asks an architectural intervention that represents the event.
Gaudí is 58 years. To recover Vic stroll with his collaborator Josep Maria Joseph Chute and Pericas, an architect born in the town. The project will be born of these rides. Torras i Bages suggests a sculpture at the birthplace of the philosopher. Gaudí replied that what is needed is a piece of furniture. Perhaps one source. Later finds the key, move the intervention consisting of flat Mercadal, current Plaza Mayor de Vic There, true to his intuition, propose two monumental lamps.
Gaudi, though it may seem otherwise, the architect of the new areas of Barcelona, \u200b\u200bwho have made the city forget about until today its medieval past. Can not be told otherwise its interventions in the Pla de Palau, with all the government buildings in the Plaza Real, in the end a demolished convent, standardized and made urban space, in the Eixample, Sagrada Familia included. The rostrum of can Batlló defined in an almost paradigmatic character of the Paseo de Gracia: a principal who is almost a house. The social hierarchy in height, the attic and, above all, the cantilever can see without being seen. The complexity of the relationship with the city's most critical power not space, it clarifies and enriches it. Gaudi is the architect medievalist nostalgia of the past that some have wanted to sell, but a cosmopolitan while anchored in its commitment to urban spaces that had not existed before.
The lamps of the flat will be an intervention Mercadal want to completely redefine this space, qualifying his last major intervention. Until a few years ago (I have no information about when was this reform, but the layout is clearly nineteenth century, so that it would place sometime in the second half of this century) consisting of its connection to the train station distant about three or four hundred yards, through a street, a kind of avenue drawn line generators. The same duct built a home there Most notably, the number 26.
Now it is an exercise inevitable urban fiction. Vic is a medieval city of radial structure, located at the confluence of the rivers and Mèder Gurri. The Mèder drain, porteriormente in Ter. Therefore, this part of the plain flows into the jungle, heading roughly west. In the northwest quadrant of the city is the Plaza Mayor, Mercadal old flat, the scene of one of the oldest and most popular markets in Catalonia, which is held every Tuesday and Saturday of the world: a show essential. This square is fed by a series of narrow streets that you plug tangentially by its four corners, defining all traffic flows along the perimeter, leaving the center free and reinforcing the perimeter arcades that have made her famous. Because of this the market works so well. In the nineteenth century bursts its western entrance, coinciding with the station until it has more width than all the other hits combined. Should measure three or four meters. This expansion has, in plan, spindle-shaped, funnel: the street reaches the entire width and lose a little section in contact with the plaza. The south side of the operation is defined by a series of large buildings, the most important of which is the casino built at one Gaietà Buigas intervention. Its north side is more complex, a pre-cut plots regularized oblique guideline. The space is contained in the square, from then on, open, with a very long vision that goes over the new city (which also low: the altitude of the station should be about ten or fifteen meters lower than the square). Even today, this opening is a wound. The plaza space is lost there, and, interestingly, when one looks at the photographs to be hung from the internet space, you discover that this corner is just photographed: as if not interested, as if it judged outside the space.
This corner, this disclosure, this wound will be precisely what Gaudi pretend to settle with his speech. There are two lamps: it is the redefinition of urban space, even today, does not harmonize with the rest of the plaza. A full-scale development project, go.
The streetlights were two asymmetrical. Which is more in the middle of the square (the outside) was smaller, the other major. Very big, indeed. Oversized patently both. Cumbersome. They were lined up on the street Riera, leading to the bridges of the river and the plain of Remei. As shown in the photographs, the alignment seemed oblique to the axis of the street. One of the lamps may be on the right axis, the other left. The lamp closer to the street, the interior, there is more to City Hall, farther from the station, and the other, the outer, middle and farther out. This lamp seems lower and smaller than the other, but by the perspective effect is the same size. Gaudí accesses are always complicated, tortuous. Enter a space defined by the weight and becomes an act that can never be lazy.
 |
| position of the two streetlights. Down the street Verdaguer. The plane is rotated 90 degrees from the previous photo. |
Whatever the alignment of the lampposts on the street Riera, they were a door on the street Verdaguer. A door to the Plaza Mayor. A door framing, precisely, the town hall, located on the opposite corner, belonging to this category of public buildings interesting-corner (identical, although more complex, the municipality of El Vendrell we've seen in the previous article on the church Jujol). In this case: a street becomes tangent and connects a string of squares, and one runs just under and leads him to the Gothic building of the municipality, which remains after the square. Here: streetlights close the perimeter of the square, mark out without the need for another building and, in turn, define the new access in a completely differently than was ever signed, which requires an unprecedented action, never used there. A resource that now has disappeared, has left the plaza orphan.
The lamps themselves: The team that is young Gaudí tab, shockingly young. The Project is Josep channel. More or less simultaneously has drawn the Pedrera. There, he asked Gaudí work plans at 1:20. Directly. By skipping small scales. The building was drawn in situ, in a corner of the site where a ship Josep Bayo, the contractor, will break down at the last minute. The plants are so large that duct built with planks, a large table as the perimeter of the site and, with a saw, cut through the courts, will slip below and displayed in the center armed with their pencils to continue drawing. Duct is 35. His troupes will Josep Maria Pericas, which he worked, his 25 years as an independent architect, and Josep Maria Jujol 29, at the peak of its prestige. The latter will, as always, the thug with the intervention. Thus, four people designing a lamppost. A great example of dedication, which now seems impossible to repeat. Gaudí
mystical properties attributed to the stones that used to support buildings. In the Holy Family are coded: porphyry at the altar and the columns that have to bear the tower of Jesus Christ, more than 140 meters high towers minor basalt, granite, etcetera. Güell Crypt has Castellfollit basalt columns, as he had to endure the upper church (which, fortunately, will not be built). In this case the shaft of the streetlights will be made, too, with this material: a black stone, tremendously tough, very difficult to work, simply and without streaks. Probably the toughest stone found in Catalonia, ripped directly from the slopes of a volcano. This supports the weight of the intellect of Jaume Balmes. The height of the lamps is enormous. Must be close to ten meters, even pass them. The perception of this height is increased by the fact that the crowns are made of metal, bent rods containing lots of air between them, expanding into the sides and into the sky. Therefore, the stems need to be, necessarily, tapered, leaving thinner in height, and that, if contrary, the weight of the material would have split. The exterior of the des causes a shaft that comes straight from the ground, from (both) of a small round platform of basalt. The interior has an interesting stem, the roots of a mangrove or streaks of a hackberry (tree very much interested in Gaudí, a model for the columns of the Sagrada Familia, which planted in several of his projects), a series of smaller stones , considerable section, maybe thirty by thirty inches by about two feet high, underpinning the main stone and form a fluted base, rough, hard, tough, essential for the perception of the whole. Above them clean up the shaft with two different sections of basalt. Halfway up the stone loses half of its thickness to keep up to endure the cross. The transition is made with a mesh reinforcement of stone used in Gothic architecture. The other lamp, which has a significantly lower stem, has two sections joined similarly.
The asymmetry of the two street lamps intensifies still more in height. The exterior is shaped like a stick, a literal form, with the top made of metal. The interior has a very clear way tree with a metal crown is oblique at a certain distance from the stem, from which come a number of branches are those that have the braziers and lamps. Gaudí and braziers Jujol always put in the streetlights, I do not know why. The metal work is not based on continuous profiles, interlocking round but give it a plant, just completed malpodadas branches sprout. Bent wrought iron workshop and finished on site, stretched to the limit of material strength: the genesis of the problems of the intervention. Dangling from these branches had to be two numbers: 1810 in the lantern inside, 1910 outside: the centenary of Balmes. At the end of 1810 and skipped the 1910, was alone in the streetlight in the form of staff, facing the square. The coronation of the two lamps is, could not be otherwise, a cross. The exterior has a flat cross perpendicular to the orientation of the numbers: two-dimensional representation of the lamp does not make sense. The interior has a cross with four arms similar to that available in other works by Gaudi. Both are made of metal.
And more: the work was painted. I do not know as I do not know how. I know nothing. I just know it was painted. Polychrome. Jujol did, and, to my knowledge, there is no record of how were these paintings. I do not know the colors, or how they were applied. This part of the work is lost forever, and gives a lot of anger.
The assembly and construction of these lamps had, as I said, materials to the limit. The stone plinths had to be reinforced. The projections of the branches had to be compensated have moved much, with its stress distributed over a twisted metal ring and oblique. The crosses were up very high, and had to stop quite windy. The intervention would require maintenance that was due to negligence from the very first day, with duct and Pericas incuse living in the city. And Vic is not an easy city. Still is not today. A banal example: the city is perhaps the best work that has built Llinàs Pep in his life: the Theatre Atlanta, I have more than five hundred photos and I promise one day deal. The brass that covers part of the stage area has earned him the nickname "Ferrero Rocher". It seems that people want it, but the nickname is not too pious, but I know that has delighted Llinàs. The tree lamp was turned into a urinal: bad smells, and above all, prestige. At two lamps were kept hobby quickly. I said later: Modernism does not enjoy good reputation in this country.
In 1924, after more or less failed restorations and repeated warning messages by Chute, Manuel Gausa (which, to my knowledge, was the grandfather of "our" Manuel Gausa), then the municipal architect of Vic (the was after the Civil War) gives the order to shoot down the lanterns: is frightened. Their lack of maintenance can cause a disaster, and simply, the city does not want.
Deputy
here the three photos that I have come to demolition. In the first photo have dismantled the metal overhangs, tied the shaft with ropes and throw men into the square. Paradox in the City of Santos: enduring the cross and receive the direct impact when the lamp fall. In the second photo, taken des a balcony, a man proud, has his leg on the shaft of the lamp, in an attitude brabucona: is happy. The third picture is a picture of the group: families, children, women, pose in front of the ruins of the lighthouse. The cross is hidden behind him.
The lamps were simultaneously a work of art and architectural works. A development project. The gift that Bishop Torras i Bages, near the end of his life, 64 years, leaves the city. The commemoration of the centenary of a cultured man, intellectual forefront, philosopher and, again, man of the church in the City of Saint Jaume Balmes. Curious: its construction was the work of a few. The builder, Gaudí, his team, Torras i Bages. Basta. Its destruction, however, is a collective work done by much of the city and held with a group photo. Plato, Republic, proposed education as the basis of any revolution. Here is why.
Updated 03/10/1911. Photo courtesy of Eduardo Almalé.
. 
