Gaudí worked on something he knew he wouldn't see finished

I visited the Sagrada Família in February 2023. I knew the basics before going in: Gaudí's work, under construction since 1882, still unfinished. What I didn't expect was the feeling of being inside a project that spans centuries — and that everyone who worked on it accepted contributing to something they wouldn't see completed.

Gaudí died in 1926 with the church far from done, and he knew that as he designed it. Even so, he left the calculations, the logic of the forms and the method detailed enough for other generations to continue without him. It's a different kind of ambition from the one we're used to. It's not building fast to see the result next quarter. It's building right so it lasts longer than you.

What impressed me most was how concepts from more than a hundred years ago feel current: structures inspired by forms in nature, engineering solutions only fully understood with a computer, decades later. He saw beyond what the tools of his time allowed him to execute.

I left thinking about how much of what we build is made for the short term — to inaugurate, to show, to harvest soon — and how rare it is to start something knowing the greater credit may go to those who come after. It holds for a cathedral, for a company, for an infrastructure network, for a child. The things that last longest are usually planted by those who accepted not seeing the tree's shade.

Gaudí accepted it. That's why, more than a century later, they're still building there — and still learning from him.