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Comment by martibravo | Hacker News Reader

It won't. Gaudí's plan was to build a big staircase in front of it creating a new public square next to the temple, replacing some apartment buildings currently being used. Gaudí's project won't be finished until then.

There's some pushback from the neighbors because finishing it all means bulldozing hundreds of apartments, although those apartments were bought at a discounted price decades ago because everyone knew they had an expiration date. And now that it's here, they want to keep their apartments even though they were told about the Sagrada Família from the start.

PS: Gaudí's name is Antoni, in Catalan. Not Antonio. He was a proud Catalan, he was arrested for talking in Catalan.

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> Gaudí's plan

It is incredibly rare for a large cathedral to be completed just like the original architect envisioned it, without any compromises made along the way*. It may even be said that a large cathedral is never finished - all the large cathedrals have a standing team of builders, usually with a tradition going back to the middle ages, and require constant maintenance work. "Finished" is thus a difficult term for such a building. But if major construction will stop in 2026, with the building no longer having any obvious large missing parts, I am totally fine with calling it "finished", even if the original plans were different. My understanding is that they already deviated from the original plans decades ago.

* I think Cologne cathedral was completed more or less according to the original plan, but only because historism was en vogue and they found the original medieval plans by chance in the 19th century. Strasbourg cathedral is a good example for a cathedral which doesn't look at all like the original architect envisioned it, with a long history of re-planning and some aesthetically botched construction works.

> My understanding is that they already deviated from the original plans decades ago.

Yes, a lot of models and plans Gaudi created for Sagrada Familia were incomplete when he died. It didn't help either that his studio(s) were ransacked during the civil war, so even if he had a 100% vision, the war would ensure those plans didn't survive.

> "found" the original medieval plans "by chance"

> There's some pushback

Quite understandable as well. The thing is big enough as it is. Bought at a discount or not, bulldozing that many homes in an overpopulated city that already struggles for space due to its geography is a little ludicrous.

Modern Architecture is ludicrous.

We build and build depressing neighborhoods in cities for us to all flee to historical centres to experience beauty for a minute. I mean if you are in the US you are lost anyway, but the Europe has some beautiful cities (Amsterdam, Venice, Palma, Rome, Vienna the list continues), but none of them are modern.

The citizens should be helped to find replacement, but please let's put some beauty back in our cities and give prominence to Gaudi's architecture (although maybe it's not the prettiest it's at least fun)

> I mean if you are in the US you are lost anyway, but the Europe has some beautiful cities, but none of them are modern.

stop treating us like some kind of zoo animals. The reason why the old tenaments were demolished is because their living conditions brought fire, disease, and discomfort with them.

> and give prominence to Gaudi's architecture

I mean... It's right there, you can't miss it. It's not like it's currently particularly well-hidden.

Ironically the Sagrada Familia is an example of modern architecture.

Yes, Catalan modernism is relatively modern. For me it's one of the most beautiful 20th century architecture styles.

It was modern at the time, same as Art Nouveau and Art Deco, but then those were (unfortunately) pushed aside by Bauhaus, Le Corbusier and post-WW2 concrete brutalist architecture.

I mean, it lacks most of the defining characteristics of modern architecture. It is highly ornate, for one. I would not put it in the category of modern, aside from describing the time period which it came to be. Art noveau seems more appropriate a description.

Yeah modern in the historic classification of the term, not in the way of speaking. Most people normally consider modern housing last decades. Lots of building up untill the second world ware are gorgous, but not considered modern by most people.

For instance Berlage in Amsterdam is modern in your classifcation. And his buildings grace Amsterdam, but most people would consider them "older", he was living around the same time of Gaudi.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Petrus_Berlage

>Lots of building up untill the second world ware are gorgous

I think you may have severely underestimated the population growth and need for housing after WWII. The world had not seen population growth like that before. The US and Europe cast away their ornate designs and focused on a burgeoning population in the US and rebuilding quickly in Europe.

I'm mostly stating an observation. But even so, that excuse would not hold up for the last decades. Architects still keep going to produce hideous things; and not at all being introspective about it.

Probably has to do with utilitarian and post-modernism; and a general deconstructionism of beauty; which is nice as a philosophy but just not inline with the general experience of a human. On top of that, architectural ego's make it worse.

Let alone Canada & Northern US, they combine it with a terrible city planning strategy, moving most utitilities such as shopping, entertainment & parcs, to a mall only reachable with car. Calgary must the most depressive unlivable city I've ever visited.

Everything produced last decade is either boring and uninspiring for instance:https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2GMG3GJ/new-modern-apartment-block..., or has to be weird and original in the "brand" of the Architect (for instance Rem Koolhaas).

As someone from Barcelona, I really wanna see it finished completely. Those apartments had an expiration date the moment they were built in the 60s. Everyone who bought them at a discount knew that they were going to be torn down when the temple itself was finished.

I feel it's like those people that buy a house near an airport, they pay pennies for it, and then start lobbying the government for a change in air traffic routes.

Exactly. Nimbyism at its finest: all gains are mine; all losses should be covered.

It's bizarre that at the same time, real estate investors think all value increases are rightfully theirs, but they should be protected from any decrease in value.

You can hardly call it 'investing' if you're protected from the downsides.

I don't oppose destruction of housing because of people losing their investment - expropriate it for all I care. But reducing the housing supply is bad for everyone. That's the important problem with nimbyism: it's not that it demands unfair advantages for homeowners as investors, it's that it prevents development that is needed for a better world.

There's definitely an argument to be made that globally iconic feats of architecture have intrinsic value that's more important than a bit of housing. But you do need to account for the social impact of aggravating housing scarcity to make that argument.

We need to build more housing, but that doesn't mean we need to keep existing housing. Most old buildings should be replaced - they were not built with modern codes in mind and so are expensive to heat, dangerous in fire, have not accessible bathrooms, or other such things wrong that are difficult to correct.

> Nimbyism at its finest: all gains are mine; all losses should be covered

Nimbyims? This is corporate capitalism at its finest. Private profits, socialized and externalized losses.

Yeah, the Glory facade needs an approach. It can't simply dump out onto the street.

If this logic holds, then we should be open to bulldoze the Sagrada Familia itself to make more apartments.

Sagrat Habitatge (Holy Accommodation in Catalan)

> bulldozing that many homes in an overpopulated city

As far as I understand, only one building (many flats though) would have to be removed in order to fit the staircase.

Problem is that there isn't a lot of space available to put the people whose home you just removed, so seems unlikely to happen unless our local government suddenly solves some really hard problems.

and i would say probably those apartments aren't even hosting locals currently, just digital nomads in overpriced airbnbs

Yes.

I mean, most of them are hosting "locals" as in residents who live in Barcelona. I just took a look now and there are at least 90 apartments available on Idealista for rent in just the ~3 surrounding blocks around Sagrada Familia.

So while in general the whole "touristic flat rentals" stuff is clearly hurting the city, maybe over-dramatizing the impact isn't super useful. Overall the situation sucks though, as prices seems to still go up :/

That's a whole other thread. The new Rent Control law has hurt (a lot) long-term rental for locals and long-term residents. All offers on Idealista and other portals are for contracts of up to 12 months, short term rentals under Spanish Law. Those are not rent-controlled contracts.

In my part of Eixample there aren't any long term units available.

Ignore what it says in the listings, even if they say "maximum 11 months contract", once you speak with them and indicate you know the situation and regulations, they'll be open to sign proper contracts, unless the owner is a huge asshole (which, many are, sadly). And yes, this works even in Eixample.

> There's some pushback from the neighbors because finishing it all means bulldozing hundreds of apartments, although those apartments were bought at a discounted price decades ago because everyone knew they had an expiration date. And now that it's here, they want to keep their apartments even though they were told about the Sagrada Família from the start.

Well, I would say this point becomes moot if they didn't have a permit for it from a start.

Also there are laws that are likely to supersede any expiration date that was set by who knows who in a different era.

I read that and saw a lot of other articles about this controversial stairway, but I haven’t been able to find any actually plans or renderings about what it would look like, particularly in context to the existing neighborhood. Do you know of any?

https://pic.blog.plover.com/art/sagrada-familia-spires/sf-fl...

Everything south of the text 'Gloria' in this picture is apartments right now. The main entrance to the basilica effectively has no approach.

That's a funny inversion of the usual NIMBY logic, where some space is set aside to build apartments but then kids start to play on it or whatever, and then there's no way apartments can be built there.

When I was there, they said the project will finish in 2150.

So they will be working on this for 200 years. The only institution that could survive that long is the catholic church.

I assume in this case they're defining finished as within the realms of the possible; kind of seems improbable that the staircase thing will ever happen?

Gaudi has been dead for 100 years. I don't think he has any vote on whether construction is done or not.

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