Saturday, February 13, 2010

barcelona parallax

I am in a city I haven't been to for over 20 years...a city in the invigorating throes of resumption, progression, self-determination...
we stay in the Barri Gotic, immersed in its medieval murkiness that is now tinged with fresh youthful hits, and yet on dark cloudy days, we are reeled back to a shadowy and more beguiling world...



but under sunny catalonian skies, we emerge to more recent times and wind our way up voluptuous architecture from the love-laboured hands of Antoni Gaudi and stand high above a crystalline city gleaming on the edge of the Mediterranean...[on the roof of Casa Batllo, below pic]


the giddily honey-combed Sagrada Familia is an almost never-ending project - and the tenacious spirit of Gaudi continues to preside over its organic construction from his resting place in the crypt...



the Mercat del Born is under renovations to update its airy metal-laced volumes to house and display again the poetically luscious arrangements of catalonian bounty...


and from an architectural pilgrimage to the Pavello Mies van der Rohe, reconstituted from its original manifestation at the 1929 International Exhibition, I lean over the slightly tattered barcelona chairs to peer past the mossy green marble wall from a glassed-in space that is the epitomized prototype of modern structural revelation...


on to venture into the 21st century thrusting of power-towers punctuating the catalonian nightsky in conical light curtains... a plump and sexy beacon to taunt that skeletal iron maiden to the colder north...[Torre Agbar, above pic]

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