Report: Disenny Hub – Springboard to Barcelona's Future
- Frank Kaltenbach
The raised city expressway that for decades had reduced Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes – the central square in Cerdà’s Plan of Urban Expansion of 1855 – to a derelict “green strip” is now only present on obsolete satellite images. In just a few months the wrecking equipment helped implement an urban renovation project named 22@Barcelona that had been in the works for many years: where the Avinguda Diagonal cuts across Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, a green oasis is emerging that is destined to be the dense city’s cultural hot spot. Jean Nouvel’s 142-metre-high Torre Agbar (2004), initially an office tower and currently being converted into a hotel, was the first step in the restructuring process of the Poblenou district. The Museo Can Framis by BAAS arquitectura was completed in 2009, and opposite it, a year later, the Media ITC Building by Enric Ruiz-Geli, which sports ETFE cushions on a green steel structure. Situating the Disenny Hub between Torre Agbar and the cheerful tilted mirrored roofs of a beloved flea market (2014) on the southern corner of the square is akin to placing a pearl in its setting. A library, 4 design institutions and a restaurant now provide a basis for urban vitality. The competition brief (2001) specified that only one fourth of the volume was to rise above the ground plane: with its roof terraces and a series of glazed skylights, the 160-metre-long partially subterranean wing for temporary exhibitions and administration doubles as the park’s topography. Oriol Bohigas and his colleagues envisioned the 30-metre-high structure as visual culmination of the Avenida Avila, but this will not be palpable until buildings occupy the flanking empty sites. As dialectic contrast to the ephemeral rounded forms of the Torre Agbar, the crisp lines of the reinforced-concrete building, whose steel structure cantilevers 30 m, extends horizontally. Pedestrians negotiate the 7 m level change between the water basin and the Plaça de les Glòries by passing through the building. A circulation tower with yellow surfaces and high-tech escalators provides access to the permanent exhibition on artisanal crafts.
