On the day the Pope is blessing the latest steeple of the art nouveau masterpiece that is Barcelona’s Sagrada Família basilica, we must remember the visionary whose death centenary was chosen as the date for consecration. Antoni Gaudí, who took over as the project’s lead architect in 1883, exemplified the aesthetic urbanism sweeping through Europe at the time. Like Georges-Eugène Haussmann in Paris before him, Gaudí embodied the idea that everything in a city—including street lamps and garbage bins—could belong to a fine guiding style. Even if not at the same level of obsessive detailing, Indian leaders must stop the country’s cities on their march towards exceeding levels of unsightliness and hand urban planning back to talented architects. What was the last public structure we built that’s the envy of the world?
