EXOTIC ARCHITECTURE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 14 November 1924, Page 8

EXOTIC ARCHITECTURE.

FREAKISH STYLES IN BARCELONA. Nobody will deny that architecture can serve as a medium for artistic expression just as well as the painting of pictures or the moulding of statues (says the London Times.) But in the designing of houses the demands of the patron usually set imits for flights of fancy by the architect; otherwise we should have Cubist houses and Expressionist churches. Anyone who wishes to see what a modern architect is capable of when allowing full scope for his imagination should go to Barcelona. It is perhaps natural that the country where Gothic at its richest meets with all the riot, in colour and fancy, of Moorish design should throiv up an exotic school of architecture; the wealth of the merchants and manufacturers of Barcelona has evidently given to its opportunity. Among the larger houses of modern Barcelona you see a confusion of styles w'hich makes your head reel..' Wembley, the White City, and Earl’s Court mixed up together would be nothing to it. All that is most florid in Gothic and Renaissance, Moorish, and Romanesque rubs shoulders with freakish fancies of modern taste. There is in the Peseo de Gracia, one of the main avenues of the town, a house which suggests the sugar and gingerbread cottage which Hansel and Gretel found in the yvood in Grimm’s fairy tale. The front is a confused mass of mosaic in five different colours, studded with little brown balconies like chocolate eclairs; the roof is clearly made of biscuit. A little further on are several specimens of -a Doge’s palace with not strictly Venetian variations; elsewhere there is a magnificent building in the style of a French chateau on the Loire.

Another amazing building looks like a section of the Mappin Terraces at the Zoo. The facade is ail irregular, undulating surface of stonework, in which holes appear at intervals with wild festoons of flowing metalwork in front of them. Incidentally these holes have window-frames in them, but they look just like caves in the face of a cliff. At the top of the cliff are curious snaillike shapes, covered with white mosaic, which presumably conceal chimneys. This prodign of a builidng contains flats, but there is no staircase, only an inclined plane ascending in a spiral. The most stupendous creation of all has still to be mentioned. At a distance it suggests the Tower of Babel, vyhich, it will be remembered, was to have reached heaven, but remained unfinished. This is also, so fax’, unfinished- Seen closer, is it shown to consist of four slender tower 8 of great height in brown stone, which stand together m a row like the fingers of a hand, or still more like four great factory chimneys. The sides of these towers are perforated, and at intervals all the wav up appears the word ‘ ‘Sanctus ’ ’ It xs a new cathedral, the church of the Holy T amily, which has been building, lam told, for 40 years. The towers surmount a most florid porch and facade, m which th© stonework surrounding the niches, where figures of saints are enshrined, has been made to suggest something like stalactite formation

Of the main body of the church nothing is, so far, complete. Part of one side of the nave is standing, and « & T rac -eful though very ornate Gothic . It looks as if the architect, ?enor Antonio Gaudi (who, by the way is also responsible for ’the Mappin Terrace house), had begun to build a Gothic cathedral, and had then been swept away from his plans b v a sudden inspiration' for higher’ things. \Vhen one hag got over one's fp. of amazemfent, there remains an impression 'of grandeur. The whole church when compete, is to be painted Madonna blue. The peoole of Barcelona clafes it already as the eighth wonder of the world.

It cannot be complained that the Barcelona, architects have not got ideas. They shou- great fertdity of resource in the handling of material. Great use is made of coloured tiles—many of them of clnarmuig desigh-and mosaics for of ouses - Here they have copied from the Romans. From the Moors they have_ learned to use bricks ; n mouldings and cornices of great variety to convey impressions of'light and shade. It is said that M Clemenceau once passed a very slightino- verdict on +he architecture of Barcelona. M Clemenceau lives in a square little hat ! the sort he prefers. Most people ace like him. Rut those who. out wishing to live in a building a nmnke nonse, yet have a taste for artistic fancy, will find nlentv to j T ,- them and not a, littlo +„ r-dmire Vaganes of these inspired Cnta-