Great Things Take Seasons

New Zealander Mark Burry is executive architect of the Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona and part of a project that needs no completion date according to the Guardian’s Jonathan Glancey. “Worthwhile architecture, whether a home or a cathedral, has its seasons. There is no ultimate need to hurry its making,” Glancey writes. “It is because the Sagrada Família has taken so long to realise that new talents with new skills have banded together to complete Gaudí’s masterwork.” Glancey says Burry has the very latest computer-design skills. “[And] by taking the slow road, the Sagrada Família has embraced the skills, intelligence and craft of successive generations. Because people from around the globe [who] raised in a world of lightning-fast, gimmee, gimmee junkitecture find it so compelling, it is even able to pay its own slow way.” Burry is currently Professor of Innovation and director of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory at RMIT University, Melbourne.