Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE
It's easy to get sidetracked by the
modernista
architecture of the Eixample, and to forget
thatBarcelonaalsoboastsplentyofcontemporarywonders.FollowingthedeathofFranco,
there was a feeling among architects that Barcelona had a lot of catching up to do, but sub-
sequently the city has taken centre-stage in the matter of urban design and renewal. Now
the world looks to Barcelona for inspiration.
EvenintheFrancoyears,excitingworkhadtakenplace,particularlyamongtheRational-
ist school of architects working from the 1950s to the 1970s, like
José Antonio Coderch
.
From the latter part of this period, too, dates the earliest work by the Catalan architects
- among them
Oriol Bohigas
,
Carlos Buxadé, Joan Margarit
,
Ricardo Bofill
and
Fre-
deric Correa
- who later transformed the very look and feel of the city. The impetus for
change on a substantial level came from hosting the
1992 Olympics
. Nothing less than
the redesign of whole city neighbourhoods would do, with decaying industrial areas either
swept away or transformed. While Correa, Margarit and Buxadé worked on the refit of the
Estadi Olímpic
, Bofill was in charge of
INEF
(the Sports University) and had a hand in
the airport refit. Down at the harbour, Bohigas and others were responsible for creating the
visionary
Vila Olímpica
development, carving residential, commercial and leisure facil-
ities out of abandoned industrial blackspots. New city landmarks appeared, like
Norman
Foster'sTorredeCollserola
tower at Tibidabo, and the twin towers of the
HotelArts
and
Torre Mapfre
at the Port Olímpic.
Attention later turned to other neglected areas, with signature buildings announcing a
planned transformation of the local environment. Richard Meier's contemporary art mu-
seum,
MACBA
, in the Raval, and Helio Piñon and Alberto Viaplana's
Maremàgnum
complex at Port Vell anchored those neighbourhoods' respective revivals. Ricardo Bofill's
Greek-temple-style
Teatre Nacional de Catalunya
was an early indicator of change on
the eastern side of the city, and it's here, around
Plaça de les Glòries
, that many of the
biggest projects have been realized or are currently underway. Anchored by the eye-catch-
ing 142-metre-high
Torre Agbar
, a giant glowing cigar of a building by Jean Nouvel, the
area is undergoing radical restructuring as a public plaza. It's now home to the recently
completed
Disseny Hub
, a sleek, zinc-plated building in which the city's applied arts col-
lections will be displayed. There are also advanced plans for a new transport interchange,
while to the northeast at
La Sagrera
work is under way on the city's second AVE (high-
speedtrain)station,withthedramatic34-storeyTorreSagrerabyFrankO.Gehrytofollow.
At the foot of Avinguda Diagonal, down on the shoreline, the former industrial area of
Poble Nou was transformed by the works associated with the Universal Forum of Cultures
held in 2004.
Diagonal Mar
, as the area is now known, sits at the heart of a new business
and commercial district linking Barcelona with the once-desolate environs of the River
