I did a walking tour of Antoni Gaudi’s architecture in Barcelona yesterday. I walked down Passeig de Gràcia, a famous street in Barcelona known for its upscale shops and hotels; not so different from 5th Avenue in New York City. The tour guide stopped us in a fairly indiscriminate part of the street and asked us to find the Gaudi work around us and gave us the hint that it is not a building.
Nobody in our tour was able to guess. The tour guide took out his water bottle and poured it on the ground and as the beautiful tile pattern came to life on the ground, he said that we’re standing on the Gaudi work. The stone tiles were originally designed by Gaudi. He explained that Gaudi took most of the inspiration from nature and designed the hexagonal tiles in a tessellating pattern such that even though each tile is exactly the same, in order to see each form in the design, it takes 7 tiles.
Here is an image of one tile:
Looking at one tile you can see some patterns, but you really can’t tell what is what. If you take a step back and look at the big picture:
You can see three distinct patterns, nautilus/snail shell, sea star and flower bloom; I was told this is actually a magnolia bloom.
This made me think about intranets and why wouldn’t it, that’s what I do. Specifically, it reminded me how important it is to take a step back every once in a while to look at the big picture of how your intranet is working.
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