P.S. Gaudí’s Only Remaining Notebook

and 9 of His Theories of Ornamentation

According to legend, when Antoni Gaudí graduated from the Barcelona School for Architecture, his teacher Elias Rogent said:

We have given this academic title either to a fool or a genius. Time will show.

Rogent’s words capture the uncertainty surrounding Gaudí’s early career. Was he a fool or a genius? History has come down on the side of the latter, but at the dawn of Gaudí’s career, this estimation was far from certain.

We have very little of Gaudí’s actual writing—and the only complete notebook that remains is from this early phase in his career. The Manuscrit de Reus (Reus Manuscript) contains writing penned between 1873–1878, during and directly after Gaudí’s time in school.

Nearly all of Gaudí’s papers were in his studio at La Sagrada Família when it went up in flames during the Spanish Civil War. By some estimates, over 6,000 items were lost—a devastating blow for historians and architects alike. This is part of the reason that we have little writing in Gaudí’s hand. The other reason is that he didn’t write much—preferring his three-dimensional models and sketches to words.

The Manuscrit de Reus survived because it was not in his studio during the fire. Today, the notebook is housed in the Reus Museum in Reus, Catalonia.

A page from Manuscrit de Reus

Gaudi filled this notebook with sketches, diary-like notes, calculations, and original essays. Most powerfully, he lays out his theory of ornamentation.

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Gaudí’s Theory of Ornamentation

On August 10, 1878, Gaudí set out to “study ornamentation seriously.” He claimed,

My goal is to make it interesting and intelligible.¹

Here are nine principles Gaudí explores in this, his only remaining notebook:

1. “To be interesting, ornamentation should represent objects which remind us of poetic ideas, and which constitute motifs.”