(Courtesy Corporacion Gaudi de Triana)

Ninety years after the illustrious architect’s death, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet has given the go-ahead for construction of the “Our Lady of the Angels” chapel designed by Antoni Gaudí in 1922.

(Courtesy Corporacion Gaudi de Triana)

Credited as a linchpin of Barcelona’s cultural identity, Gaudí’s grandest project to date was the magnificent La Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain, which began construction in 1882. Using curved forms inherent in nature based on materials such as wood, muscle and tendon, the breath-taking cathedral earned Gaudí the appellation “Architect of God.”

Following a long-running campaign by Spanish non-profit organization Corporacíon Gaudí de Triana to realize the shelved project, the proposed cathedral will be Gaudí’s first outside Spain. Its main tower will be layered with lapis lazuli, a deep blue stone mined in Chile, and crowned with a copper cross.

The design is the exact same blueprint Gaudí created for Chilean Franciscan Friar Angélico Arando who, in a letter to Gaudí in 1922, asked him to design a chapel “as only you can do.” Slated for completion in 2017, the chapel will be located within the Parcque Cataluña, a junction between La Avenida Alameda and El Antiguo Camino Real.

The 98.4 foot-high chapel will feature subterranean multipurpose spaces, a pair of large public plazas, and a gallery dedicated to Gaudí’s work. The architect is famed for his art nouveau and Neo-Gothic designs, which expressly overturned the formal order governing the majority of architecture during his time.