Soft Macho
- on Jean Nouvel’s Torre Agbar
While the pride of Malmoe city currently is the high-rise named Turning Tower designed by Santiago Calatrava Barcelona has got its Torre Agbar possessing even more artistic values for an architectural landmark. As the name indicates torre meaning tower and agbar being composed of agua for water and bar for Bar(celona) Torre Agbar is the new headquarter of Aguas de Barcelona, the water supply of this proud Catalan metropolis.
In fact the soft-formed not-threatening profile of the high-rise has strikingly similarities to the most macho part of the male body and was immediate1y knick-named ‘the penis’ by the witty public. The tower has been erected south of Plaza de Gloria next to a traffic circle at the end of impressive Diagonal street attracting notice by everyone passing the north-eastern part of Barcelona. Even by night the 145 meter high edifice can be experienced as a major attraction for this new part of the city.
Jean Nouvel, the architect behind Torre Agbar(1999-2006), claims an inspiration from the rocky surroundings of the nearby Montserrat while Antoni Gaudi’s corridor parables of the Santa Teresa College(1890) might also come into consideration. The façade of the office tower is composed of an inner cast in-situ concrete part using a patented climbing form system covered by an anodized aluminium cladding in bright colours with openings. For covering this polychrome façade an outer skin made of movable horizontal glass louvers carried by a metal chassis envelopes the building protecting it against the sun while offering natural ventilation.
Looking at first circular the plan of the tower turns out to be egg-shaped. The inner core of concrete goes up to 110 meters above street level while the last 35 meters are covered by a glass and metal cupola. From the outside the colours are changing from brownish red at the bottom and gradually blending with cool green to bluish-grey ending in a silver-white top.
In fact Nouvel’s first essay leading to the Torre Agbar concept was his Tour sans Fin(Endless Tower) planned to be built next to Johan von Spreckelsen’s Grand Arch in la Defense, Paris(1989), the most impressive aspect of this project being the almost metaphysical ambition of changing the substance of the tower from being evidently earth-bound at ground level to gradually evaporating with the height and almost blending the shiny building with the sky at the top.
The departures of Torre Agbar was using the most conventional of means since level one to 25 span between nested cylindrical concrete walls while the upper 5 floors are pre-stressed reinforced concrete plates cantilevered off the central stem, all enclosed in a triangular steel-framed dome of glass. As mentioned above this structure is sheathed in a continuous rain screen of small glass panels, curving inwards to a recessed summit platform that conceals cleaning gantries and aerial arrays. With immense sophistication Nouvel has capped the central core lift shafts and overruns off within the upper space.
The pattern of small glass panes measuring 120 by 30 centimetres each tries to scatter light as well as imperfections in fixing will scatter it. Likewise the perimeter concrete wall is pierced by 4.400 different window openings adding variations in response to the expanding and contracting spaces of the otherwise conventional office floors within. The complicated elliptical plan and section shapes were reduced to more economical components of circular radii. In fact the very unusual built-up of the facades contributes to reducing solar gain while the massive concrete perimeter walls act as a heat sink smoothing out thermal ebbs and flows.
Floor plans are organized around the vertical circulation layout. A bunch of lifts near the east wall serves the concrete-enclosed floors while a pair of lifts in the core passes on to the upper levels and a large service elevator sits under the highest point of the building.
This disposition brings the user a clear orientation to the building emphasizing the outlook to the north-west(opposite the sea and) towards the mountains inland. The structure’s stumpy tubes of reinforced concrete are ideally suited to resist any future incoming seismic activity, which Barcelona’s sitting on the sand terraces between two river mouths tend to magnify. Furthermore four levels of the basement containing parking act as a buoyant foundation to the superstructure.
It is tempting to compare Torre Agbar to Lord Foster’s Swiss Re in London of which the latter from a geometric point of view is certainly more uncompromised and precisely structured . While the former shows an even blurred outer detailing while curving inwards towards the summit seemingly the most notable flaw of this fascinating landmark.
Flemming Skude
Source: Matthew Wells 'SKYSCRAPERS', Laurence King Publishers, 2005.
