Antoni Gaudí once described the Passion Façade of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família as something that should be “harsh and cruel, as if made of bones.” The west-facing entrance uses skeletal forms to evoke human suffering and Christ’s final days, contrasting with the more organic Nativity Façade on the opposite side of the basilica.
Gaudí repeatedly drew on skeletal structures in his work. Barcelona’s Casa Batlló, widely known as the House of Bones, features a design associated with dragon vertebrae, while Casa Milà includes undulating arches reminiscent of a rib cage. His approach treated anatomy not only as ornament, but also as a possible model for a building’s structural framework.
The architectural use of bones and skulls predates Gaudí by thousands of years. Communities in the Middle East displayed human skulls in domestic spaces as early as 7,200 BCE, apparently honoring ancestors. In Mesoamerica, the Aztecs built tzompantli—elaborate racks for displaying the remains of sacrificial captives—as demonstrations of power.
Skulls became especially prominent in European art and architecture after the Black Death, when memento mori served as reminders of life’s transience. As cemeteries filled during the Middle Ages and the early modern period, remains were exhumed and transferred to crypts decorated with bones. Portugal’s 16th-century Capela dos Ossos and the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic are notable examples.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, architects including Gaudí were studying skeletal anatomy as a source of both visual language and structural ideas. The resulting works range from avant-garde religious buildings to contemporary constructions designed to resemble bones, demonstrating the enduring influence of the human skeleton on architecture.
Sources: Architectural Digest.