Antoni Gaudí

Hello! My name is Antoni Gaudí. When I was a little boy, a long time ago in the 1850s, I loved to play outside more than anything. I would look all around me at the wonderful world. I saw that nature did not have many straight lines. Have you ever seen a perfectly straight tree branch? I did not think so! That is why I loved things that were twisty, bumpy, and curvy. I loved looking at bumpy seashells, the soft shapes of flowers, and wiggly animals. Nature was my favorite thing to watch and learn from.

When I grew up, I became an architect. An architect is someone who designs buildings for people to live and work in. I wanted all of my buildings to look like the beautiful things I saw in nature. I designed buildings with walls that were wavy like the sea. I made chimneys on the rooftops that looked like colorful mushrooms popping out of the ground. Inside my buildings, I made tall columns that looked just like big trees in a forest. One of my favorite things to do was use colorful, sparkly, broken tiles to decorate my buildings. Around the year 1900, I started working on a big park called Park Güell, and I used my shiny tiles there to make everything sparkle.

My most special dream was a giant church called La Sagrada Família. I started working on it in the year 1883. I wanted it to look like a magical sandcastle reaching for the sky. It has tall, tall towers that look like beehives all stacked up. I lived to be 73 years old, and my work was finished in 1926. Today, many people come from all over the world to a city called Barcelona to see my fun buildings. Seeing my wavy, wiggly, nature-inspired creations still makes people smile.