A glimpse of Gaudi’s broken beauty in glass shards, as Barcelona marks his centenary

BARCELONA – How can something so beautiful make me look so ugly? I am glancing at an unflattering reflection – my eyes are wonky and my chin is lopsided.

Artist Angelika Heinbach senses my distraction and advises: “Don’t look at yourself, Ronan. Look at the art.”

We are standing in Mosaiccos, the Barcelona studio run by Heinbach, a German based in Spain for more than 30 years. She makes mosaics, which involve precisely arranging pieces of glass or ceramics to form a pattern or picture.

She specialises in Trencadis, a mosaic style popularised in Barcelona and championed by architect Antoni Gaudi in the late 1800s. The Spanish city is celebrating 2026 Gaudi Year, marking the centenary of Gaudí’s death with multiple events.

Trencadis uses random shards of shattered glass, rather than neatly cut pieces, unlike regular mosaics. 

It was by peering at one of her jagged Trencadis creations that my reflection looked asymmetrical. What I was really looking at was the creative legacy of Antoni Gaudi. The brilliant architect designed many of Barcelona’s most famous buildings, all embellished with Trencadis mosaics.

Visitors to Barcelona will see shattered glass carefully arranged by Gaudi on the facades and interiors of stunning cathedrals, mansions, museums and parks.

In his hands, shattered glass does not have negative connotations: vandalism, burglary, riots or, in my own memory bank, a young Australian boy tearfully apologising to his mother for a misdirected kick of a football.

Instead, in Barcelona, these shards represent Gaudi’s vast influence on its cityscape. Perhaps no other metropolis is so defined by the works of a single architect. Barcelona, one of the world’s most visited cities, receives more than 15 million tourists a year and many of its top attractions bloomed from the fertile mind of Gaudi. 

From the avant-garde cathedral of La Sagrada Familia to the whimsical mansion Palau Guell, to the fantastical green lung Park Guell, to the quirky homes of Casa Vicens, Casa Mila and Casa Batllo – Gaudi birthed them all. These are so revered in global design and architecture circles that, collectively, seven of Gaudi’s Barcelona creations were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Barcelona will hold dozens of events in 2026 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death on June 10, 1926. They range from exhibitions explaining his style to showcases of his lesser-known works and specially designed shows held at many of his key creations. 

Gaudi will also be honoured during many of the hundreds of events in Barcelona as part of its reign as the 2026 UNESCO World Capital of Architecture. Tourists can attend Gaudi-focused seminars, art workshops, and guided tours of his constructions.

For a hands-on Gaudi experience, they can join a group or one-on-one Trencadis lesson with Heinbach at Mosaiccos in the city’s Gothic Quarter.

She begins these classes with a concise history of this art form. Heinbach is not just a Trencadis expert, but also a devoted fan, having left her homeland for Barcelona so she could see, analyse and touch Gaudi’s mosaics whenever she pleased.

She explained to me how Trencadis emerged from Spain’s Catalan Modernism artistic movement. A form of Art Nouveau, Catalan Modernism was spearheaded in the early 1900s by Gaudi and architect Lluis Domenech i Montaner.

The latter also used Trencadis, which decorates his two most iconic buildings: Barcelona’s Palau de la Musica Catalana concert hall, and Sant Pau Recinte Modernista hospital. 

But it was Gaudi who made these jagged mosaics his trademark. Whether or not he created Trencadis is still a point of debate among academics. In reality, there is no confirmed inventor of this art form, although Gaudi was the first architect to employ it widely in his buildings.

According to one oft-repeated anecdote, Gaudi was visiting the ceramics studio of Catalan artist Lluis Bru when he became annoyed by the slow, clinical actions of creating a mosaic. So Gaudi broke some tiles and hastily arranged them into an attractive pattern. Then he stood back, looked at what he had done and saw its potential.

First, Trencadis is genuinely unique. The random shapes of every shard mean that, by definition, no two mosaics can ever be the same.

Second, Trencadis is eco-aware. Essentially, it is a form of upcycling, as it was created from broken tiles destined for the trash bin. 

This pleased Gaudi, who was a passionate pioneer of constructing buildings that were environmentally friendly. Trencadis also helped, in this manner, because its hard-wearing materials protected the facade of these buildings from weathering and made them more durable.

So Gaudi contacted local factories and collected hundreds of kilograms of fractured glass, ceramics, stone and marble. Then he began forming Trencadis designs on all of his new builds.

Visitors to Barcelona can admire the design in the construction of Palau Guell, said to be his first use of Trencadis. Look closely at the front-door knocker of this 1880s-built mansion and you will see a tiny mosaic.

Far more prominent, though, are the Trencadis embellishments Gaudi later applied to Casa Batllo, Park Guell and La Sagrada Familia. Casa Batllo is particularly radiant. Its entire front facade is cloaked in mosaics featuring a rainbow palette – purple, pink, green, blue, lilac, gold, orange, red, maroon and brown.

Park Guell uses Trencadis just as boldly. This large, hillside park was built between 1900 and 1914, and features a series of cartoonishly curvy gates, walls and pavilions, most of which are inlaid with shimmering mosaics.

Far less obvious is the Trencadis on the architectural marvel La Sagrada Familia. This is partly because its main mosaics are high on its giant towers, which are more than 150m tall.

That world-renowned basilica is finally nearing completion after 143 years. The Barcelona authorities are hopeful it may be finished in 2026, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s passing.

Even if Barcelona misses that deadline, it will not have the slightest impact on Gaudi’s legacy. The rule-bending, icon-creating renegade broke ceramics and pieced them back together in a way which is forever Barcelona.