Eusebi Guell, and industrialist who owned the land, currently called Parc Guell,
planned to create
a garden city that would host some 60 houses for the well to do.
Guell commissioned Gaudi, who set about to work in 1900 with
characteristic gusto, employing several outstanding contemporaries
(Josep Maria Jujol, in particular) to help him. In the ensuing
14 years he managed to trace out the park and its installations.
However, only two houses were built before interest in the idea waned,
leaving people of Barcelona with a bizarrely beautiful park in which
to stroll and bask in glorious views across the city to the
Mediterranan Sea. The entire architecture of the park follows
Gaudi's absolute insistense on the absence of straight lines.
Sparkling ceramic benches in the top platform are designed by Jujol
and look like one long twisting serpent.
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