These organic movements and lines gave Art Nouveau its particular style. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Barcelona architect Antoni Gaudí magnified Haeckel’s marine organisms into banisters and arches. Giant sea urchins decorated his stained-glass windows, and the huge ceiling lamps that he designed looked like nautilus shells. Enormous clumps of seaweed intertwined with algae and marine invertebrates gave shape to Gaudí’s rooms, staircases and windows. Across the Atlantic, in the United States, Louis Sullivan, the so-called ‘father of skyscrapers’, also turned to nature for
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