My current series of work has been inspired by Antoni Gaudi. When thinking of the current prompt for Cloth in Common of Climate Change I started to research how Gaudi was a forerunner environmentalist and came across some interesting studies. Gaudi was extremely aware of the environment and used recycled materials where possible and was determined to express his work strongly influenced by the natural world.

This preface of Gaudí’s Great Book of Nature: Reconsidering the Peripheral Reception of Proto-Environmental Architecture by Mark Pantano at the University of Pennsylvania describes Gaudi’s influence very well – apart from the scholarly words.

“At the turn of the 19th century, Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi gave physical expression to an environmental consciousness that was emerging from the peripheries of many Western societies in the midst of industrialization. Significantly, most of Gaudi’s famous works stand at the physical periphery of Barcelona, affirming the moral supremacy of natural settings over the urban core. Within his intellectual context, Gaudi surpassed all standards of environmental sensitivity. He innovated structural systems by combining ruled geometry with natural anatomies. Further, his projects utilize recycled and local materials as well as prefabricated construction, methods that even contemporary green architects have not fully explored. Beyond proto-environmentalism, the reception of Antoni Gaudi’s work depends entirely on peripheral conditions. Barcelona, a politically inconsequential city with burgeoning industrial wealth, sought to establish a central identity in part through cultivating a unique taste for exuberant architecture. These conditions converged in a culture that financed and celebrated Gaudi’s vision. However, both Spain’s peripheral location in Europe and the dominance of modernism in mainstream architecture sharply curtailed Gaudi’s global impact.”