Gaudí i els jardins de l’antic «manicomi de sant boi de llobregat»
- Autores: David Agulló Galilea
- Directores de la Tesis: Juan José Lahuerta Alsina (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2020
- Idioma: español
- Materias:
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
- Resumen
Created between 1903 and 1912 by an anonymous architect, the Modernist constructions in the gardens of the former Mental Hospital in Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona, allude to, anticipate or are contemporaries of works by Antoni Gaudí. For example, the serpentine bench in Park Güell (1909-1913), Casa Milà (1906-1912), the crypt at the Güell Colony (1908-1914) and the model for the ceilings in the Sagrada Familia (1915-1921).
The building of the sanatorium in Sant Boi de Llobregat –with somewhat careless and rudimentary construction because the labour was provided by the mental hospital’s patients– presents architecture of great geometric complexity and contains an elaborate symbolic discourse that also hints at the participation of a first-class architect. This thesis therefore expounds that, given its characteristics, the construction of the former Sant Boi de Llobregat Mental Hospital would articulate as a first example, alongside the Güell Colony crypt, the great stylistic and conceptual change that led Antoni Gaudí to create his final architectonic works.
Furthermore, the aim of the thesis is to create a broad exploratory field in the same period – mid-nineteenth to early twentieth-century Catalonia– as the subject of the study, making inferences from its social, cultural, economic and religious context. Thus, the Modernist interventions at the former Sant Boi de Llobregat Mental Hospital could become an observatory and referential axis that allows us to ask more questions and formulate connections from a new perspective that generate new viewpoints and approaches to history.
For all this to be possible, the study also examines the biographies of the different agents involved in the period contemporary to the construction of the Modernist site in Sant Boi de Llobregat, including key figures such as Jacint Verdaguer and Antoni Gaudí himself and analysing the ideological-artistic connection established between the pair. It must be noted that Catalan society in the second half of the nineteenth century, then governed by a liberal political system and a fully capitalist society, was undergoing a significant process of change and transformation towards modernity and contemporaneity. Among a significant part of the society, this process triggered a response and debate, largely related to Catholicism, which was completely against all these modifications. Gaudí and Verdaguer are the two paradigmatic figures in this debate and in the face of this ‘traumatic’ experience of modernity they established a rich, complex ideological-artistic connection that would lead them to produce such singular, exceptional elements as the text entitled ‘Exorcisms’ by Verdaguer and Antoni Gaudí’s project for the Sagrada Família Temple.
Consideration must also be given to the fact that the reading and interpretation that noucentism made of Gaudí’s work situated it far from its profound and complex symbolic content and this thesis aims to explore a field directly related to the Catholic world and specifically to the text in the Book of Revelation, which could enrich and add a new dimension to the views held on and interpretation of Gaudí’s architectonic works.
