Kilian Valkhof

Building tools that make developers awesome.

Inspiration

Life, 27 May 2007, 2 minute read

My last blog post is from almost a month ago, meaning that I didn’t post the entirety of May. (But not anymore, huzzah!) Work has been keeping me occupied for the larger part of the month, though there was a notable 4-day trip to Barcelona.

Apart from having an unnatural amount of beautiful women, Barcelona is the city of an architect I greatly admire: Gaudí. The architect is responsible for some of the most surreal buildings I have ever seen. Most notable are the Sagrada Família, Parc Guell and Casa Milà. All are major tourist attractions, and even in May they were packed with people.

Architecture

Walking around and inside the Sagrada Família has left me with an unseen surge of inspiration waiting to come out. It is truly amazing how much ahead of his time Gaudí was, and still is(!). He was able to blend all sorts of elements of nature with a (still) very futuristic look. It’s worth noting that his masterpiece, the Sagrada Família, is so complex that they are still working full time on it, and plan to have it ready by 2026 (The construction of Gaudí design started in 1883). When you visit it, you are literally walking in-between the construction workers (and a couple hundred of other tourists…)

Art

But all those people still do not change the building itself, the way the light falls through the windows in exactly the right places, the way the inner pillars seem to branch out like trees, how the entrance seems to be rooted into the ground by it’s support pillars, as if they are there to keep it down, instead of up. It is already a glorious masterpiece, even though still only a minor part is built. I have made a lot of photographs, but the best one still doesn’t give you a good idea of how awe-inspiring the church is.

Design

The modernistic, “biomorphic” style would work very well with websites, but I haven’t encountered any yet. I have already began to toy with idea’s of incorporating elements of the way Gaudí designed into websites. I think my design for this blog will incorporate a lot of Gaudí. Right, so i know you must think “he’s had a blog without a personal design for how long now?” But I promise you, I will have my own design before the summer starts. This post will be a testament to that :)

If you have a website yourself, what was your major inspiration for the design?

Polypane browser for responsive web development and design Hi, I'm Kilian. I make Polypane, the browser for responsive web development and design. If you're reading this site, that's probably interesting to you. Try it out!