The World's Oldest Construction Project | Sagrada Familia

this episode of real engineering is brought to you by brilliant a problem solving website that teaches you to think like an engineer Barcelona is a city characterized by regimental city blocks and white linear streets a departure from the narrow winding streets of most European cities yet nestled in these rigid streets are some of the most unique and beautiful buildings ever created each rooted in nature through structural forms and designs these beautiful structures stand out among their neighbors and are the work of one of the world's greatest architects Antony Gaudi his buildings were not just inspired by nature they were a celebration of nature a celebration of life and a celebration of the god Gaudi devoted his life to casa milà casa Valeo and perhaps most famously the yet to be finished Sagrada família all are within a short walk of each other and each is defined by their complex curves that defied all conventional architectural rules these buildings were born from the mind of Antony Gowdy born in 1852 to a family of craftsmen Antony Gowdy found much of his inspiration and meaning in architecture by following the patterns of nature using the beauty that he saw as a gift from God as the ultimate blueprint to the world Gaudi himself once said originality consists of going back to the origins and that he did these complex intertwining parabolic forms created in a time before computers existed her so complex that his magnum opus the Sagrada família a building which began construction over a hundred and thirty-five years ago is still under construction today we're going to learn its story and why it has taken generations to complete Sagrada família began construction in 1882 under the guidance of architect Francisco de Paula Valliere who resigned a year later allowing Gaudi to take over at the age of 30 even at this young age Gaudi saw his opportunity and set out to make the project his master transforming the project and incorporating his signature style combining gothic and Aris nouvelle architecture to create something completely new sandra de familia looks like the work of evolution rather than design like a joint elaborate termite mount whose blueprint was carved from the laws of nature Gaudi was not just a master architect designing buildings and creative and innovative ways is the challenge of an artist he was a master engineer he understood how these shapes impacted the structural integrity of the building and allowed physics and nature to dictate his designs rather than fight against the laws of nature he worked with them he bridged art and science like no man before him he understood that nature is defined by the laws of mathematics and to him this was the ultimate celebration of God columns mimicking trees and skeletons arches smearing rib cages seashell inspired spiral stairways spires emulating crystals and ceilings that rival forest canopies for natural beauty their designs are all rooted in natural phenomenon but for a human mind to recreate them in stone took a man with true genius so how on earth that Antoni gaudí designed something so complex in an era when computational analysis did not exist evolution has happened upon these complicated structures true trial and error natural arches are the work of chance the weeks simply fall before we can witness them while plants developed cells capable of sensing the direction of gravity to influence their growth patterns and bone cells are stimulated to grow and multiply when placed under stress nature is the ultimate form of intelligent design and Gaudi pursued a simple concept to guide his replication of these designs the challenge that Gaudi faced was one of material strengths his primary building material being manju 'ok stone a type of sandstone unlike all stone it is strongest in compression place a rock in compression and I can withstand enormous pressure but place it in tension and tiny imperfections in the rock allow cracks to grow and soon the entire stone will fracture along those cracks the challenge with constructing structures using stone is primarily one of keeping the stone in compression at all times this has been a well-known building technique for thousands of years but it was the Romans who truly saw and utilized its potential unlike ancient Greek structures characterized by vertical posts and horizontal lintel constructions Roman buildings are defined by arches and domes they raised massive structures like their famous aqueducts and the Pantheon dome structures that still stand today a testament to their sturdiness the arches strength is derived from how it transfers waste to the ground let's compare a post and lintel structure and an arch spanning an equal distance as long as the posts remain vertical they will remain entirely in compression the downwards force of gravity squeezing the stones against the unmoving ground however the horizontal beam the lintel will experience both compression and tension as it sags from its own weight the upper surface will bend inwards causing compression while the lower surface will experience tension as it is stretched this severely limits its structural strength an arch in comparison allows the force to be distributed neatly across the arch there are no hard corners to allow bending stresses to develop the reaction force from the ground can travel smoothly up the same path as the force of gravity takes downwards allowing the stones to remain in compression and thus allowing the urge to carry more weight this imaginary path is called the line of thrust and modeling it was gaudi's specialty designing with these concepts in mind is relatively simple with a 2d structure like an aqueduct but expanding it out to form something as complex as an gratifi Miglia is a whole other ballgame even the simple columns of the basilica's interior splash and diverge like growing trees the flying buttresses of the passion facade sweep outwards a defy belief that they could possibly remain standing when they are constructed from nothing more than sandstone so how did Gaudi do it simple he used strengths when you hang a flexible material like a rope over a gap it has no rigidity to allow us to remain in any position other than the one that allows it to remain in pure tension hang a rope from a single point and it will hang directly downwards the entire length of the string in tension hang it between two points and it will sag downwards until once again the entire string is in tension add more waste and it will sag with a deeper parabolic arch to allow us to remain in tension you can see a pattern developing here we can use strings to map out these lines of thrust boss we want our stones to be in compression not tension how can we apply this to stones simple take a photo and turn it upside down Gaudi started by drawing the footprint of the church on a piece of wood at a 1 to 10 scale next he attached anchor points for the strings in locations where he wanted support columns to exist from there he gradually started adding strings and weights the weights were scaled to represent the actual weight the columns would need to support at about 110 thousand of the actual weight this weight was scaled to represent the difference in stiffness between the string and the rock that it represented he tinkered with a string model for a decade before he was content with its final form he used this model to inform his design work in this reconstructed model underneath the Sangre de Familia you can see the shape of the building beginning to emerge this was the skeleton upon which he would care of his masterpiece Gaudi devoted the rest of his life to carving this model designing the intricate facades each depicting stories from the Bible adding detail that few would see and ask the project ran on Gaudi were true from life rejecting any additional projects in 1914 he made his home inside the Sagrada família workshop his obsession with his final masterpiece took over his life he neglected his personal appearance and became a disheveled recluse his days were devoted to brain and overseen the design and construction of the Sagrada família and on June 7th 1926 disaster struck at the age of 73 Gaudi was struck by a tram on his daily walk to confession and was left to die in the streets passerbys did not recognize the ragged man as the famous and beloved architect hours later Gaudi was taken to the hospital but received only basic care when he was finally recognized it was too late no more could be done to save his life and he died two days later on June 10th 1926 the funeral the followed shut down Barcelona streets the residents of Barcelona showed up on mass merging his coffin to its final resting place in the crypt of the Sagrada família the project was less than a quarter complete at the time of his death with the mastermind behind the complex project God completing it would become a Herculean task made even more difficult by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 an already difficult task just became the world's most difficult puzzle as anarchists destroyed the only existing models of gaudí's designs [Music] here the building could have been abandoned or its vision changed as Spain shook off the cobwebs of post-war poverty in the 1950s a new generation of engineers and craftsmen devoted their skills to completing gaudi's vision employing tools and materials that Gaudi never had access to attempts to piece together the shattered models back together were difficult as pieces were either too damaged or missing completely but the designers that took up gaudi's vision worked with what they had this is now their story this is where this story really begins to captivate me this building has taken so long to complete that it has spawned not just generations of Engineers but generations of Technology the passage of time has led to some increases in production rates but has also caused its fair share of delays sandstone comes in a wide variety of colors due to differences in impurities these can range from blues and grays right through to pink and red when construction began on Sagrada família this sandstone was in plentiful supply from the mantua quarry it's this stone that gives the Sangre de familia its distinctive tan color while also having a high quartz content making it more durable than most sedimentary rocks but as the decades passed the stone began to become more scarce in 1954 when work began on the passion facade the limited stock of the stone quickly became apparent soon the sculptors hands became idle as the stones availability was limited to whatever was left over in stocks or what could be scavenged from other buildings in Catalonia 1000 meters cubed of the stone was made available when the old olympic stadium was remodeled to increase spectator capacity when stone was not available they resorted to bricks which can be seen in many of the cathedrals towers but recycled stone was always preferred when possible as the project drew on these sources began to run dry creating a bottleneck in their supply chain that prevented work from continuing the projects managers were forced to start looking for alternative supplies from around the world over the past few decades of construction the Cathedral has incorporated various variants of sandstone and granite from around the world doing their best to match their color and physical properties to the original manju extol stone from Galatia Cantabria Scotland England and France have all contributed to help finish the Sagrada família while other stones have been sourced to meet more specific aesthetic requirements the passage of time has come with plenty of setbacks but in recent years technology has provided many blessings obvious improvements like modern cranes are noticeable yet probably underappreciated by the general public 3d modeling software is have slowly caught up with gaudi's genius early civil engineering software was too simple to recreate his designs both architects working on the project discovered that aeronautical engineering design software could model the complex curves Gaudi envisioned and the project actually resulted in a merging of these software's to improve civil engineering modeling techniques cash flow has increased drastically over the years to four decades the only money the Sagrada família received was through donations to the church in the early days of construction these donations came in dribs and drabs but today the church has no shortage of funding being one of the most popular tourist sites in the world since it opened its doors to the public Sangre de Familia has been raising a consistent and reliable cash flow from the millions of tourists to pay to visit it every year this helps pay for the materials and workers needed to complete us but those workers are not always easy to come by the art of sculpting has slowly withered away over the past century and skilled craftsmen are difficult to come by here technology has come in to lend a helping hand sculptors still play an important role in the process completing delicate tasks like surface texturing but today most of the heavy-duty coding is now done by CNC machines which can cut the stone exactly to requirements and ensure perfect fits between the pieces for the internal steel supports because today the workers are not assembling the tower is stone by stone like in gaudi's time there are using tension steel bars running through the center of the stones to compress the stones together and form a larger panel allowing pieces to be partially assembled before being lifted to the tower and assembled like a giant stone Lego set this has drastically decreased construction time with all of these advances the project is now expected to finish far sooner than originally expected by 2026 on the 100th anniversary of gaudí's death the building has undoubtedly diverged from gaudi's original designs the sculptures of the passion facade are nothing like the sculptures of the nativity facade built during gaudi's lifetime colors of stone are often places the difference in weathering between the nativity facade and the newer parts is particularly noticeable the architects that took up the mantle of gaudí's masterpiece could never have finished it exactly to his vision after his plans were destroyed but I have no doubt in my mind that gaudi would be proud to see his creation finally come to a close entering the basilica you are met with floods of color from the stained-glass windows each depicting stories from the Bible while filling the interior with colors reminiscent of rainbows sunsets and light piercing through a green forest canopy I am by no means a religious man but there is something inherently spiritual about this building and I think any person who shares that same aw of our mysterious existence on this planet will feel the same for me that is the root of all religions and to me this building is the ultimate celebration of spirituality through its celebration of nature in the end I believe I express a great deal of my all with this world through learning how it works I don't believe in the idea that learning science runes are innate Wonder and awe in the mysteries of the world it's the exact opposite the more I learn about how the universe works the more amazed I am that we somehow exist witness at all so satisfy the feeling of wonder and dive into the world of science and there's no better place to start than brain with plenty of courses and things like geometry and maths so you can learn more about the complex parabolic curves the gaudi used or you could take the classical mechanics course which will run you through the science of statics essential knowledge for any civil engineer brilliant are continually releasing new courses to like their new course on search engines where you'll explore the core ideas behind algorithms and data structures that make search engines work all of brilliants courses have storytelling code writing interactive challenges and problems to solve so you can learn by doing no matter which course you choose brilliant will guide you from your current knowledge base to where you want to be this by Biss leaving you two fascinating revelations about our universe if i have inspired you and you want to educate yourself then go to brain Torg ford slash real engineering and sign up for free and the first 500 people that go to that link will get 20% off the annual premium subscription so you can get full access to all their courses as well as their entire daily challenges archive as always thanks for watching and thank you to all my patreon supporters if you'd like to see more from me the links to my Instagram Twitter subreddit and discord server are below

Channel: Real Engineering

Views: 1,701,302

Rating: 4.9144135 out of 5

Keywords: engineering, science, technology, education, history, real, civil, architecture, sagrada, familia

Id: kkNGdzo_3EA

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 23 2019