Barcelona, October 5-10, 2014
THE GAUDI RESEARCH INSTITUTE & GAUDI BCN PROJECTS
550 participants
UB and Gaudí Research Institute organise the Gaudí 1st World Congress
Professor Tokutoshi Torii, from Kanagawa University (Japan), showed his pleasure “with Barcelona having a research centre on Gaudí as it is an essential and historical demand of the international scientific community”. Moreover, the architect Toshiaki Tange ensured that “Gaudi is a stranger: people want to know him truly; they need more than present Gaudiland”; and the engineer Jos Tomlow concluded: “I hope we are ready to really understand Gaudi. It will be striking if my colleagues and I are able to communicate our 40-year-old research”.
Concerning future expectations, the art historian Francesc Fontbona stressed that “a young generation is necessary to study and research on the reasons for the delay on knowing the importance of Gaudí, and why some avant-garde figures such as Guillaume Apollinaire, André Breton, Man Ray, Dora Maar, Salvador Dalí, Paul Éluard, etc. appreciated it before”. The architect and engineer Arnold Walz pointed out that “Gaudí is a clear example of interdisciplinary scientific work; its study opens great present and future possibilities”. Finally, the architect and engineer Berthold Burkhardt said that “like it is being done in central Europe, it is crucial to set up an international cooperative project to study, preserve and communicate Gaudiʼs architectural heritage”. The architect and urbanist Hou-Teh Chien explained that “China is on Gaudíʼs zero year. We must take profit of the Congress to help Chinese people to know the true universal value of Gaudí from the beginning”.
Busan
On 23 October 2013, the Congress was internationally presented in Korea, in Busan. It was part of the exhibition and symposium entitled “Walking Barcelona with Gaudí”, which commemorated the 30th anniversary of the town-twinning between Barcelona and Busan.