What's the Oldest Active Building Project in the World?

have been described as the Bible written in stone. The architect of the Sagrada Familia was the eccentric and deeply religious cutal on artist Antony Gordy, who was struck and killed by a street car in ninety six when only the Nativity facade of his master work had been completed. At that point, the rest of the ambitious structure existed

only in Godi's complex architectural drawings and scale plaster models. Tragically, Goodie's priceless models and most of his drawings were destroyed by anarchist revolutionaries just ten years after his death, and ever since, generations of architects and engineers have labored to piece together Godi's singular vision and finish his magnum opus. As of this writing, the Sagrada Familia is one hundred

and thirty seven years old. The first stone was late in eighteen eighty two, making it the longest running active building project on Earth. Not the longest running ever, though, to name just one. Cologne Cathedral in Germany was started in twelve forty eight and completed in eighteen eighty. It wasn't until twenty nineteen that the City of Barcelona officially granted Sagrada Familia a construction permit, even though Godi applied

for one in eighteen eighty five. The permit itself was the most expensive on record, a whopping four point six million euros that's around five point two million dollars American to complete the monumental project by six, which will be the one hundredth anniversary of Godi's death. As an architect and structural engineer, Godi was at least a century ahead

of his time. His eleven vision airy works in and around Barcelona, seven of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, demonstrate how Godi employed wildly innovative building techniques to mimic the beauty of nature. Godi's park Gwill, on a hill overlooking Barcelona, features a broad patio contained by wavy, curved walls adorned colorful Mediterranean tiled mosaics, and his casa batio looks as if an alien apartment complex landed in the

middle of a nineteenth century city. Its breathtaking facade is an architectural quilt of curved stone, iron, glass, and tile, all girded by God's uncanny grasp of engineering and material science. Godi was a devout and passionate Catholic who believed that the deepest way to commune with God was to abide

in nature his creation. When thirty one year old Godi received the commission to build the Sagada Familia church, he drew up plans for a towering structure with eighteen spires representing the twelve apostles for evangelists, the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. Pope Francis's rumored to be considering Godi, known sometimes as God's Architect, as a candidate for sainthood. In contrast with the grand exterior, the inside of Sagrada Familia

is meant to evoke a naturalistic forest of stone. Massive pillars stretched from floor to ceiling, where their twisting branches intertwined to form an ornate canopy. Work was slow due to the technical complexities of the cathedral and the fact that it relied solely on private donations. Godi worked on the Sagrada Familia for forty years, fully devoting the last

years of his life to the project. His biographer once told the TV show Sixty Minutes he wanted to write the history of the Catholic faith in one building and added the Godi slept the construction site and took little care for appearance, wearing frayed pants held up by a rope belt. Godi knew that he wouldn't live to complete his master work, so he drew up detailed architectural plans and, most importantly, scale plaster models of each of the cathedral's

sculpted facades and tow wring spires. When Godi was killed in the nineteen six tram accident, his associates were able to keep building based on the architect's drawings and models. But then the Spanish Civil War erupted in nineteen thirty six and gangs of anarchists targeted churches as symbols of institutional oppression. The Sagrada Familia was attacked and although the structure was saved, the anarchists broke into the architect's workshop

and smashed Goodie's plaster models. Without those models, progress on Sagrada Familia slowed to a crawl, further delayed by the decades long fascist rule of Francisco Franco. Later, when New Zealand born architecture student Mark Bury backpacked through Spain in the nineteen seventies, he was recruited to the cause of finishing Sagrada Familia while remaining true to Godi's original vision.

When Bury asked how these Stonemasons and other craftsmen were receiving their instructions, he was shown boxes and boxes containing the fragmented remains of Godie's plaster models. Bury told sixty minutes, my job is to reverse engineer the models. It was considered the only way to faithfully reconstruct the vision locked inside Godie's singular mind. Barie worked on Sagarda Familia for thirty years and is responsible for bringing the project into

the twenty first century. He consulted with industrial designers working on vehicles, ships, and other complex engineering problems. All of them were using three D aeronautical drafting software. The could prototype designs and materials digitally before constructing them in the real world. So Bury decided to employ the same drafting technology to solve Sagrada Familia's thorniest engineering challenges on computers

before casting them in concrete, iron, and stone. For a one and thirty seven year old construction project, Today's Sagrada Familia is remarkably high tech. In addition to using the latest virtual modeling software, components are prototyped using three D printers, and architects can explore and interact with digital models using

virtual reality. Because of these technological and engineering advances, the car chief architect of the Sagada Familia, Jordie Foley's confident that Gordie's grandiose structure, including the tallest church spire in the world set at five hundred and sixty six feet that's a hundred and seventy three, will finally be completed in At least that's the hope. As fully mused to Architect Magazine, are the great cathedrals and basilicas of the

world ever truly finished. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang. Grain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's house to Works. For more in this lots of other topics that we're always working on, visit our home planet as to Works dot com and for more. Podcast for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows