A few weeks agao, I was in Barcelona, and I visited Gaudi’s still-unfinished cathedral, Sagrada Familia. The cathedral offers a very cool example of the use of complexity in design.
Up close, Sagrada Familia looks like a mash of stuff. And it is really. A lot of people say it looks like it’s melting. There are many ornaments and just a lot of stuff going on.
On the side of the cathedral I’m describing, there are many statues depicting scenes from the birth of Jesus: the roman soldiers killing on the newborns, the Three Wise Men, the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, the birth in the stable, and so on.
The design of the building as captured in the pictures above isn’t particularly appealing (although it is unique, which can be enjoyable) . I’d say it looks complicated and messy. However, if you’re looking at the cathedral in person, and you’re able to look at it as a whole, it’s marvelous.
It took me a while to unravel why this was. In design–whether it’s music, architecture, or a story–people desire unity and structure. There needs to be a sense of closure and fulfillment. And this mass of stuff does provide closure and coherence, but it does it in a more novel manner: it does it through narrative.
Anyone can quickly tell that there is a story being told through the stone scenery; you don’t need to know anything about the Christian religion. Each scene is fairly modular and is arranged according to a hierarchy of importance. The most important parts of the story are front and center.
The scenes quickly give the observer a feeling of “what’s this story being told”? It’s almost the same feeling and communication one gets when reading a graphic novel. You can see that there is something happening. The hierarchical structure of the arrangement (which isn’t linear like a graphic novel) gives the scenes a sense of order.
But, and most importantly, the hierarchical structure draws the observer to the center and points towards the sky, and the story culminates with a green cedar tree surrounded by doves–a symbol of peace and salvation and rebirth. The story then slowly fades into the heavens.
-Kevin
7.7.2010
