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from a signed water polo ball used in the 1992 Olympics to Everest
mountaineer Carles Vàlles’ ice pick.
Beyond here Avinguda Diagonal flows on to
Plaça Francesc Macià
and the
uptown shopping and business district – you can catch a tram from the
plaça
along the avenue up to L’Illa shopping centre, or just walk the short distance
Contemporary architecture
It’s easy to get sidetracked by the
modernista
architecture of the Eixample, and to
forget that Barcelona also boasts plenty of contemporary wonders. Following the
death of Franco, there was a feeling among architects that Barcelona had a lot of
catching up to do, but subsequently the city has taken centre stage in the matter of
urban design and renewal. Now the world looks to Barcelona for inspiration.
Even in the Franco years, exciting work had taken place, particularly among the
Rationalist 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
Frederic 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 facilities out of
abandoned industrial blackspots. New city landmarks appeared, like Norman
Foster’s
Torre de Collserola
tower at Tibidabo, and the twin towers of the
Hotel Arts
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
museum,
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
(TNC) at Plaça de les
Glòries was an early indicator of change on the eastern side of the city, and the same
architect is currently overseeing a huge hotel, leisure and marina complex by the
beach at Barceloneta.
It’s around
Plaça de les Glòries
that many of the biggest projects are currently
underway. Anchored by the eye-catching 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. There are advanced plans for a new transport interchange, plus a
Centre del Disseny
(Design Centre) by MBM (architects Josep Martorell, Oriol
Bohigas and David Mackay) that will bring together the city’s applied art collections.
Zaha Hadid has a “Cinema City” in the pipeline at nearby Plaça de les Arts, while to
the northeast at
La Sagrera
work is underway on the city’s second AVE (high-speed
train) station, with the dramatic 34-storey Torre Sagrera by Frank O. Gehry to follow.
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. At
Diagonal Mar
, as the area is now known, Jacques Herzog
(architect of London’s Tate Modern) provided the centrepiece
Edifici Fòrum
, which
sits at the heart of a new business and commercial district linking Barcelona with the
once-desolate environs of the River Besòs. Meanwhile, on the other side of the city,
it’s Richard Rogers who is revitalizing the city’s neglected bullring,
Les Arenes
at
Plaça d’Espanya, intended as a gateway landmark, incorporating a domed garden,
viewing platform and leisure centre.
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