The Torre Agbar skyscraper is located in Barcelona, Spain. This thirty-eight story tower was completed in July of 2005. The building is in the Poblenou neighborhood and was named after the Agbar Group, the owners of the building. Its interesting design and bullet shape originally received much criticism but many citizens actually like the building now.
The Tower’s Architecture and Design
The building measures over 538,000 square feet and rises into the sky over 465 feet. The building has nearly thirty thousand offices, three thousand technical facilities, over eight thousand services, an auditorium, and over nine thousand square meters for parking. It cost over one hundred and thirty million Euros to build. The King of Spain launched the tower’s official opening on September 16, 2005.
French architect, Jean Novel, designed the building. He stated that Antoni Gaudí, a gushing geyser, and the pinnacle of the Montserrat mountain range, were his inspirations. The Torre Agbar is slightly elliptical. Technically, the tower is comprised of two non-concentric cylinders that are capped by a steel and glass dome which weighs two hundred and fifty tons. The building does not have any internal columns. The main material that was used to construct the building was concrete. The services and emergency stairs in the tower are situated in the center concrete core.
Most of the tower’s thirty-four floors are used for offices while another three house the various technical elements of the structure. Additionally, there is a cafeteria that takes up an entire floor, and another floor has several conference rooms. One floor has an observation area. The elevators on the south side are constructed with glass and provide a wonderful view of the sea. The auditoriums, along with the parking facilities, are located on four subterranean floors. There are different zones in the glass brie-solei that can be opened in the building’s lower floors so firemen can rescue people during an emergency.
The Exterior
Although the interior of the building is quite interesting structurally, it is the exterior that intrigues most people when they travel down the different highways in the city. The first layer that covers the concrete building is a polished aluminum layer in greys, blues, and greens. The second layer adds a beautiful iridescent sparkle and luster to the tower. This layer consists of nearly sixty thousand clear glass sheets. The facade panels have forty different colors.
There are over four thousand windows that have louvers that are able to tilt in several directions in order to block out bright sunlight. Throughout the night, this tower is even more magnificent, as there are four thousand pink, red, blue and yellow LED lights that illuminate the exterior.
The tower’s LED technology is able to generate different images on the exterior of the building. This lighting system can create sixteen million colors because of its highly sophisticated system of software and hardware. It can quickly transition between the different colors which sometimes can create a surprising effect.
The Torre Agbar is very popular with tourists and many take the opportunity to go inside the building to look at the interior. Today, the tower is on most tourist bus routes and there even is a helicopter tour than people enjoy taking at night.
