Celebrating Antoni Gaudí, Visionary Architect, 100 Years Later

The building is Casa Vicens, the first major project of Antoni Gaudí, an architect whose name has become synonymous with Barcelona. 

Born in 1852, Gaudí is widely considered the father of Modernisme, Catalonia's version of art nouveau.

"The important thing to understand about Gaudí's relationship to Islamic art is that it was part of his search for truth in architecture," said Carlos Canals Roura, founder and honorary president of the Gaudí Foundation. 

"He experimented with different styles and influences to create his own methodology. I think that is the genius of Gaudí."

The Gaudí Foundation is celebrating his legacy with a traveling exhibition that uses interactive technology to explore Gaudí's artistic imagination. Starting in Tokyo, the international tour is expected to last several years.  

Inspiration from the East

As a student at the Barcelona School of Architecture in the 1870s, Gaudí immersed himself in books containing images of Egyptian, Indian and Persian buildings. His early notebooks are full of observations about the Alhambra in Granada, one of the best-preserved palaces of the historical Islamic world.

Orientalism was in vogue in all branches of the arts at the end of the 19th century. But Gaudí did not use Eastern references for exotic flourish.

"I think what Gaudí did really well in his architecture is that his Islamic influences were more complex than just borrowing its forms," said Sofya Abramchuk, former head of design at the Gaudí Foundation who established the Originate Institute, headquartered in Barcelona, to promote creative innovation inspired by Gaudí's work.

"He was an artist who transcended cultural boundaries, embracing truth and beauty wherever he could find it, and integrating all of it into his work in new and unique ways."

Shortly after Casa Vicens, Gaudí took on a commission in the small town of Comillas in northern Spain. The result was El Capricho, a colorful house that mixes architectural styles.

There are clear Islamic overtones in the minaretlike tower, while the pointed arches framing the windows are reminiscent of Gothic architecture. The house is decorated with ceramic tiles that alternate between yellow sunflowers and green leaves.

"Gaudí's obsession was color," said Mireia Freixa, professor emerita at the University of Barcelona. "Ceramic tiling as found in Oriental architecture offered him an easy way to add color to a building. In my view, Orientalism was not an end in itself. It performed an architectural function." 

In 1892, Gaudí received a commission that could have placed him directly in the Islamic world: the design for a Catholic church in Tangier, on the northern tip of Morocco. Although the project was never built, its surviving sketches offer a window into Gaudí's approach. 

Far from imposing a European style onto North African soil, Gaudí envisioned a building that harmonized with the local aesthetic environment. 

Concepció Peig, a researcher in architectural and artistic heritage, and Manuel Arenas, an architect, studied Gaudí's original drawings in depth, publishing their interpretation of his vision for the church in Gaudí in Tangier. 

"The meaning of Gaudí's work lies in his architectural language," said Peig. "Each element combines form, function and metaphor. His architecture appeals to the senses, memory and the imagination. He wanted to create architecture that spoke."

Gaudí's sketches for Tangier depict a building crowned with tall, slender towers that resemble Egyptian dovecotes. Given the Islamic context, these would not have been bell towers. Their purpose, Peig and Arenas concluded, was to help manipulate the light entering the church.

"For Gaudí, it is the play of light that transforms a room into a sacred space," said Arenas. "An external dome allows light to enter, then an internal dome filters the light through perforations. The patterns of light constantly change with the sun. We see the same use of double domes in Islamic architecture."

Although the Tangier church never rose from the ground, the project revealed Gaudí's engagement with the spiritual underpinnings of Islamic design: light as a manifestation of the sacred, geometry as a metaphor for divine order. 

"Gaudí saw that Islamic geometry derives from mathematical principles that are also connected to divine unity," said Abramchuk. "He used geometry as a spiritual language, rather than just copying patterns."

Gaudí’s use of form and color

By the turn of the 20th century, Gaudí's style was evolving rapidly. The overtly Islamic references of his early works gave way to more fluid, organic forms.

Casa Batlló is one of Barcelona's best-known landmarks. With its sinuous lines, it feels worlds away from the geometry of Islamic architecture. But Gaudí's use of light and his integration of structure with ornament still speak of his early inspirations.

The house centers around an inner courtyard that channels sunlight and ventilation, much like a riad, or traditional Islamic home. The courtyard walls are covered in square tiles that modulate through different shades of blue, in a design that is quietly ingenious.

"Gaudí used dark blue tiles at the top and progressively lighter blue as you go down, until the lowest tiles are white," said Judith Urbano, associate professor at the International University of Catalonia. "Likewise, the windows at the top are small and gradually get bigger as you descend. This is because Gaudí wanted to create more or less uniform light throughout the building."

Beneath the roof, Gaudí created a vaulted attic notable for its series of white catenary arches that have been compared to a ribcage.

"In Arabian architecture you find horseshoe arches and lobed arches," said Urbano.

"Gaudí innovated by using the catenary arch, the shape a chain forms when hanging under its own weight. He loved this arch because gravity, nature itself, dictates the shape."

Casa Batlló's facade is covered with a mosaic of shattered ceramic, a technique known as trencadís. These tile patterns have been compared to zillij, the geometric mosaics found on Moroccan walls and fountains. 

Whereas zillij relies on precision-cut pieces, trencadís embraces irregularity. But both turn small fragments into shimmering patterns that play with light and shadow.

Another famous Gaudí landmark—Park Güell—stretches over a hillside overlooking Barcelona. In the trencadís mosaics that decorate its various structures, Gaudí and his collaborator, Josep Maria Jujol, gave free rein to their creative imaginations. 

A long serpentine bench undulates around the main terrace. It is covered with abstract, seemingly random trencadís patterns that combine nature, geometry and hidden symbols.

Architecture master’s final project

In central Barcelona, a jagged cluster of spires pierces the sky, flanked by even taller cranes. The Sagrada Família—Gaudí's final project—has been under construction since 1882 for a mix of historical, political and economic reasons, as well as the need for highly skilled artisans to implement his ambitious vision. A large section of the central tower was lifted into place in October 2025, making it the tallest church in the world.

Near the top of the spires, the words Hosanna and Excelsis are spelled out in white ceramic tiles. The letters are arranged vertically and increase in size the higher up they go, an optical adjustment that ensures they read evenly from ground level. 

"In Islamic architecture, you often see calligraphy, invocations, on the walls," said Joan Aicart, an author and historian. "Such inscriptions are not very common in Christian architecture. But Gaudí put them on the towers of the Sagrada Família." 

When Gaudí inherited the project in 1883, the foundation of a Gothic church was already in place. But the rest—the unique structure, the airy geometry, the manipulation of light—belonged to his own architectural vision.

Inside, gently slanting columns of basalt, granite and sandstone branch out like trees, creating a structural forest that supports and distributes the weight of the building. Light pours in through stained glass windows in a carefully orchestrated dance: blues and greens in the morning, golden tones at sunset.

"Gaudí recognized in Islamic esthetics the same spirituality he sought to re-create in his own spatial concepts," said Diana Darke, a Middle East cultural historian and author of Stealing From the Saracens and Islamesque. 

"He was inspired by the relationship between nature and the divine that he saw in Islamic art and architecture, sensing God in the same spatial uncertainties, the same interplay between light and shadow."

As the Sagrada Família rises toward completion, it carries echoes of a lifetime fascination with the Islamic world: the arches of Andalusi palaces, the filtered light of mosques, the imagined church spires of Tangier.

Gaudí's genius lay in his ability to take inspiration from Islamic architecture, interweaving it with other influences, to create a style unmistakably his own.

His buildings are not only world-famous landmarks of Barcelona. They are the embodiment of a long architectural dialogue between cultures, written in color, light and stone.