Tuesday 26 October 2010

Torre Agbar (Barcelona; Jean Nouvel, 2005)

Torre Agbar night view



The Torre Agbar was designed by Jean Nouvel in assotiation with B720 architects. The building of 144 meters in height is located between Avinguda Diagonal and Carrer Badajoz, near la Plaça de les Glòries in Barcelona.

According to Jean Novel, the shape of the Torre Agbar was inspired by the mountains of Montserrat and the shape of a geyser rising into the air.


The Agbar Tower envelope is a double skin facade with a maintenance catwalk within.

The double skin presents an inner leaf formed by windows within a steel frame and the outer leaf is formed by glass louvres supported onto supporting steel frames.

The design makes easier the façade installation, because the spandrel metallic cladding and the glass louvres were assemblied from the maintenance catwalk. This improved the site safety conditions whereas supposed a cost saving in lifting devices.

The glass louvres supporting frame and the catwalk were installed from the scaffoldings. Afterwards, the  catwalk was employed as a platform for the glass louvres installation, later used as the vertical protection for the rest of the façade works. Finally, any maintenance work can be done from the catwalk, being safety and accessible for any façade component.

One of the outstanding elements of the building is the façade lightening system. The tower has more than 4,500 luminous LED devices operating independently that enables the generation of images on the  envelope of the tower. The system is capable of creating 16 million colors.

Agbar Tower has achieved to become one of the landmarks in Barcelona, which is very meritorious  as  being surrounded by the projects carried out by the greatest architect ever, Antoni Gaudí.


View of the Barcelona from the maintenance catwalk

Installation works taking place from the scaffolding


Installation of the glass louvres taking place from the maintenance catwalk

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