The most intriguing transformative project underway in Barcelona that I could find (in a city with an irresistible desire for transformative projects) was the redesign of the Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes (map here, and right) – the junction of three major avenues and Metro station just northeast of the central city.
Only a kilometre from Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, it was intended by Ildefons Cerdà, the urban planner who laid out the Eixample (the extension of the city in the 19th century), to be a large public square. But historically it was a dreary, sparsely developed outpost – an interchange for road and rail, occupied by parking lots and surrounded by concrete walls.
Nonetheless, you know where it is, as does every resident and visitor to Barcelona. It’s home to this:
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This is the Torre Agbar, a 38-storey highrise designed by French architect Jean Nouvel in association with the Spanish firm b720 Fermin Vazquez Arquitectos for the offices of the Barcelona water company. It opened in 2005, a couple of years after the similarly phallic Gherkin in London. Coincidence, of course. Nouvel says he was inspired by Gaudi bell towers and geysers spouting from the sea.
Because it stands alone in this district of the city, spectacularly lit at night (one of the first towers to extensively use LED exterior lighting), it is truly a landmark. And yet, it does not stand alone and isolated in the context of Glòries; there is no vast plaza to set it off. From the street, it looks like this:
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The site is small, and the footprint of the building even smaller. It feels like a very large piece of sculpture, and doesn’t take long to walk by. The walls may be blank, but the whole block is not.
This is only one element in the transformation of Glòries, though the one meant to mark the gateway to a new technological district. The 2008 crash, of course, delayed everything, but Barcelona continued to develop some other key projects. As we’ll see.
