Never Judge a Genius By His Clothing

Surrounded by negative media, pressures at work, grid locked traffic, power hungry executives, and ill-fitting shoes it’s sometimes easy to forget just how awesome humans can be.

We not only have the power to change our behaviour, we also have the power to recognize a need to change our behaviour – unique amongst the animal kingdom they tell me. We can express love, discuss light, perform mathematical calculations, mix concrete, blow glass, lead teams and be a part of one. We can perform finance, we can fund-raise, we can dream and we can share those dreams with others. We can show compassion for others (though recent studies of lessor discussed Darwinian theory now suggest this is far from unique with humans, um, duh) and we can marginalize others. We can see an injured man in the street and we can choose to help him or leave him to die.

In the center of Barcelona stands, quite literally, a testament to all these things. A building so unique in its design and ambition that you can barely believe your eyes. A building unlike any other in the world. Its use of light, it’s complexity of concrete, its many faces, its ongoing construction. A building still unfinished because the genius behind it was hit by a streetcar, ignored by others who thought he was a beggar because of his filthy clothes, and left to die in the street. The building truly does represent the best and the worst of (wo)mankind.

I’m talking of course about Antoni Gaudí’s Basílica de la Sagrada Família. (By the way, if you’re on an iPad right now check out the virtual tour and lift your iPad up – amazing in its own way)

Beyond the irony of it being incomplete this building can not be described in words – so we took photos. Enjoy.

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