A Gaudi-like Spanish Architect Who Spent All His Life Building a Labyrinthine Edifice (1)
A Gaudi-like Spanish Architect Who Spent All His Life Building a Labyrinthine Edifice (1)
In terms of mobile game, have you ever remember the megahit Monument Velley that went prevalent in 2014?
This vogueish game, as it were being downloaded for 50 million times in two years since its launch, is known as ‘the most beautiful game’ – aesthetic fine drawings topped with visionary experience rendering players joyfully lingering on the game page alone.
In the game interface, one can easily find the art of architectural illusions, both real and imaginary, quick-witted craft alike being its most special part. Even today when we look at this game, we still feel stunned by its unlikely-to-be-transcended features.
In fact, the design of Monument Valley was initiated via the influence of M.C. Escher, a Dutch graphic artist, one of the greatest in the 20th century made his name known uniquely for his visualized graphs that are being studied and referred to by many scholars. And Monument Valley was built on Escher’s Trompe-loeil.
The left photo shows an Escher’s visual work detaching the spatial logic to turn the 2D into the insurmountable 3D – this is the characteristics of Escher's works.
hands1948
Gravity 1952
Belvedere 1958
Waterfall 1962
Even if we are given visual illusions out of Monument Velley or Escher’s works, we don’t factually leapfrog but stay at the 2D planer graph. In Spain, however, there was an artist who spent most of his life building a real ‘illusionary’ mansion.
Our first impression about the house: mystical, simple, dreamlike and romantic. It seems to be a space that does not belong to reality but a pristine cave full of sensory stimulation.
This house was built by Xavier Corbero, a Catalonian artist and Spain national-level sculptor who died in 2017, and the most spectacular work he left to the world is this 3,000 square meter private mansion.
Xavier Corbero
It is not just the artist’s residence, but a piece of art exquisite beyond compare, and a castle radiant with ideas, like Corbero comment it himself, “I have ever been in pursuit of poetic qualities, be a sculpture, a building or a space – all ought to have such a taste after completion, and any other things too.”
The low-key Xavier Corbero is actually known as one of the most important artists in Catalonia after Gaudi.
Antonio Gaudi
His works featured surrealist fantasies and enriched Spanish romance, his admirers including even Salvador Dali.
What’s worth mentioning is Dali was the first person who had patronized Corbero’s and became his best friend ever since. The surreal style in Corbero's works could also be more or less related to Dali.
During the Spanish real estate downturn in 1969, Corbero took a fancy to a deserted factory land where he started to build a house after a quick purchase. He was planning to have only a relaxing place for his sculptures but his construction never stopped until it became a complex.
The whole mansion is composed of stone walls of medieval style with numerous colonnades and 300 arches in total.
The building’s concrete structure casts a very strong geometric sense to arouse bold and creative conceptions of the visitors. Countless staircases, spiral, straight, cul-de-sac, are also mainly featured like Escher’s paintings that are just mysterious and unpredictable.
There are nine buildings that are interconnected to one another, a dozen of small-and-big courtyards, surrounded by stone walls. In the main building of the mansion laid 10 bedrooms with bathrooms, which has five floors on the ground and three layers of basement. Long narrow passages are found leading to adjacent buildings. To say it as a castle is not exaggerating, for it is placed with a great number of green plants adorned with shadowy sunlight.
The most stunning view would be an architecture ‘The Tower’ running through six stories that is described as the ‘biggest kaleidoscope in the world’.
And it is indeed like a giant kaleidoscope considering its designed circular patio with octagonal windows, one of Corbero’s most satisfactory designs. Every sunny day when sunshine refracts through glass windows, the whole space is permeated with mysterious but charming lights, a kind of poetic feelings Corbero intended to create.
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[Images via Art & Design, Jinri Toutiao, Baidu]
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