For this trip to Barcelona, we bought a 2-day ticket for those open-top tourist bus which circle the city. There are three loops: one goes to the North as far as the city’s university and Camp Nou (FC Barcelona’s stadium); one goes west up to the Montjuic hills and comes back down near the harbor, and the third loops around the east side in a new part of the city – Diagonal Mar. It is so named because the Avinguda Diagonal which cuts across the entire Barcelona from the Northwest, ends here where it meets the sea and the mouth of River Besos. The area is captured by one of my pictures taken while we were landing. Click to see a full screen version of the photo. The triangular Edifici Forum is clearly visible.
The area has undergone extensive re-development from a poor, industrial corner of Barcelona to a planned, open, mostly residential area. When they ripped up the railway tracks in the industrial zone, some were left as sculpture on the median of one of its main streets.
The area is filled with new architecture, started by the Olympic village which was located here. Then came the hotels on the beachfront designed by famous architects. The area boasts several world class hotels, class A office buildings, a public park, the largest convention center and shopping center in Catalunya.
The low lying blue building above is the Edifici Forum, designed by Herzog & de Muron. The white structure is very new and unknown to me.
This building below I believe is a biomedical research center.
There are two towers joined by a large base that share this facade.
I wonder how the window frames work, it looks as if they are sliding and have blinds that can be adjusted.
One of the hotels next to the conference center.
Edifici gas natural by Enric Miralles. Notable for the horizontal block that sticks out.
One iconic sight we missed here is the fish sculpture by Frank Gehry which sits in front of the Hotel Arts on the beachfront. I was inside one of his fish-inspired architecture last year in Berlin. Follow this link to the earlier blogpost.
A few more pix of the buildings.
