Lizard Medallions

Design medallions: Antoni Gaudí
General Design: Josep Fontseré
Materials: Limestone
Inauguration: June 12, 1881

Antoni Gaudí's participation in the works of the Ciutadella

José F. Rafols (1889-1965) Gaudí and met him the first monograph on the architect reusense should. It explains how the young Gaudí, still a student, actively participated in the project of the cascade of Ciutadella to the point that attributes the design of the monumental waterfall in the young Gaudí, claiming that its files had a photograph of the Palace of Longchamp Marseilles. Later historians generally admit that yes surely the young Gaudí worked with Fontseré, but always as an assistant, and hardly accepted to design the whole. It is more likely to act on the orders of his master and as much, take care of some detail, as the two reliefs there at the entrance of the Aquarium-the structure that rises behind the Birth of Venus and that, again, he says Ràfols are young Gaudí. But it may be more interesting to emphasize training the young Gaudí received Fontseré to try to find which part was drawn by the modernist genius when he was still just a student. Ràfols not mention the construction of the Grotta under the Aquarium, an element possibly forgotten in the 20s but it could be a connection point between the nineteenth-century aesthetics and Gaudi architecture. La Grotta represents the way it was in the time to understand and interpret the natural, but were made of plaster, as a decorated, and filled with fake stalactites. This concept is radically different from that Gaudí develop years later: just watch the catwalks Park Guell understand that Gaudí does not create decorated, no attraction, but wants to integrate architecture into the landscape. La Grotta de la Ciutadella is the most obvious architectural approach to nature from a nineteenth-century perspective, and that is the Gaudí had to start to develop the relationship between architecture and nature. Young student participation in this project, however small, therefore represents an important point in learning Gaudí, like all architects, besides inspiration also had to study and learn the trade.