2 new books for the Gaudí Library Fund

Barcelona, Jannuary 2003.- As the starting of the 151st Aniversary of Gaudí two new books about the architect were presented in the assembly hall of the Caixa de Catalunya Foundation in the Casa Milà last Thursday, January , 16th.

In it, they took part in the act: J.L. Jiménez Frontín, director of the Fundació Caixa Catalunya; Jaume Santmartí, director of the ETSAB; the director of publishings of the UPC; and the authors of the two books, the architects José Mª Montaner, Pedro Azara and Juan Bassegoda Nonell, the curator of the Royal Gaudí Chair.

	The first book corresponds with the exhibition Hotel Attraction: una catedral laica, that took place in December 2002 in the Royal Gaudí Chair. It is a compilation of documents referring to the work attributed to Gaudí and that was never built, but that presently it is a highly current issue as a reborn project. It groups the monography of Juan Matamala and his illustrations, together with the ones by Gaudí, the minutious study of the architect Marcos Mejía López and the contributions made by the students of the Technical Superior School of Architecture of Barcelona.
Finally it encloses an article and a CD-ROM with the hotel recreation and its hypotetic location in Manhattan made by Marc Mascort, a designer and also professor of the New York University.
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	The second book Josep Bayó Font, contractista de Gaudí, is the complete transcription of a conversation held in January 1970 between the contractor José Bayó Font and the professor, and also the author of the book, Juan Bassegoda Nonell. This tape was recorded in a rudimentary and bulky magnetophone. The book offers a valuable first hand material for the scholars, with plenty of not known data about the construction of several gaudinian buildings, from someone who had always been so close to the architect.
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It should be added as a colophon that last May 2002, Mr. Joan Sardà Forest, who purchased the Bayó building firm in 1960, has ceded to the Royal Gaudí Chair part of his archives, including the glass negatives of many interesting photographs taken during the building of the Casa Milà, and the first Glorious mistery in the Monumental Rosary of Montserrat, of a doubtless documental richness.