"...One of the most hideous buildings in the world."
Entry posted by Zatth
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That's what George Orwell described the Sagrada Familia as in his Homage to Catalonia.
Well, on Thursday night we'll (me and the Forensics Team) be traveling to Barcelona and staying there for a week and a half for the International Forensics Association tournament. The tournament sounds cool and all, but the reason I'm really excited for the trip is because I'll get to see said "hideous building".
Not that I think the thing is terrible; I'm a bit of a Sagrada Familia fan myself. So it only made sense that our head coach, who offers a class called COMM 307: Field Study in Communication, gives team members the option of, every year, writing a paper on an aspect of the country we travel to that year and compare it with something in the U.S. As an excuse to learn more about architecture and symbology, I proposed that my paper became about the Sagrada Familia and the Library of Congress (Sumiki might have something to say about that). Specifically, I'll be examining the juxtaposition of the symbology of both buildings, how the Sagrada Familia as a temple intertwined with Catalonian identity, and the Library of Congress as a temple intertwined with the nation's founders and early American identity. Yes, it's a mouthful.
Lucky for me, my hospitalization gave me a week to curl up next to Gaudi's biography by Gijs van Hensbergen (highly recommend it), the Taschen book on Gaudí, as well as two books on the Library of Congress. It's weird to think that almost a month ago I was having my stomach cut open, and in two days I'll be hopping on a plane (I actually fought to be operated as soon as possible so I could make the trip).
And over the past week I've been absorbing everything about Gaudí and the Sagrada Familia. There are so many factoids bustling in my head I feel like the unofficial tour guide of the group. I'll also get to interview members of the Sagrada Familia Archive, and maybe get a behind-the-scenes look at the Archives and other documents. For a myriad reasons I think the Sagrada Familia is one of the most gorgeous buildings on the planet, and these past two weeks have just made that conviction stronger.
To conclude this convoluted mess, I found out while at the hospital that I might have much more to thank this building for; my mom mentioned that in college she'd taken an Art History class, and spent hours poring over pictures of the Sagrada Familia, and she too became obsessed. A few years later, my mom went on a first date with my dad, and as he pulled out his wallet to pay for something she noticed a little torn-up photo of the Sagrada Familia. She said she fell a bit more in love with him then. And just as she said, when my dad passed by the hospital that evening, he pulled out the same picture, so many years later but unmistakably the building that towers over Barcelona.
I hope to bring many pictures from the trip, as well as a more fair (thought probably very biased) report to counter Mr. Orwell's.
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