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OF BONESCasa Batllo is not only a building or one of the Gaudi’s masterpieces, it is a legend of art. The striking Modernista facade conceals a whole world of artistic and architectural surprises.

The famous Casa Batllo was built between 1905 and 1907. It is situated in the centric Passeiq de Gracia in Barcelona. The house has its name by Josep Batllo i Casanovas, he was a textile industrial that assigned of the house of Antoni Gaudi.

The inside of the house is decorated with ceramics of brilliant and subtle colors. In the first floor of the house you can find a strik-ing stone structure in the form of a loggia – roofed open gallery, this one is supported by columns and decorated in frame windows with stained glass. In the upper parts of the house are the ceramics and multi-coored glassmosaics interrupted by ironba balconies in the form of masks.

In general the whole house gives you the fill-ing that the whole place is alive, particuarly the inside of the house gives you a felling that you are inside in some kind of creature. The house is uniqe also because it has not a single straight line. Everything is narrow, it has planty of interesting and vibrant colors, ab-stract shapes and it is decorated with lot of different materials.

Antoni Gaudi worked on the house from year 1904 to 1906, but even now it looks incredibly new. A facade of the house extends be-tween two baclonies including many other smaller and elegantly curvedbalconies. They look like birds nests that stick to the front of the house.Facade of the house itself glistens with small round plates in several colours that reminds you on fish scales. The house has no corners. Beautiful are the walls they are totallyrounded in undulatio and have the feel of a sea serpent of the smooth skin about them.

These unusual shapes exacerbates an un-derwater feeling by using natural light beryl colors such as pink, green and aquamarine on the interior’s walls, ceilings and pillars with scale-like designs. Gaudi also made detailed designs like different window sizes depending on its height from the top to ensure each room received the same amount of sun light. Simple stained glass patterns also adorn some windows.

The roof is arched like a dragon or dinsaur’s back. It is thought that Casa Batllo’s rounded feature to the center’s left and ending at the top in a turret and cross symbolizes the sword of St. George (patron saint of Catalonia), which has been plunged into the back of the dragon.

Casa Batllo is not only a popular stop for tour-ists and those who are interested in architec-ture, it also offers rooms for a wide range of very special events on Passeig de Gra cia .

Casa Battlo wall strcture

Casa Battlo wall strcture

Park Guell -Municipal garden Park Güell is a garden complex with architectural elements situatedon the hill of el Car mel in the Gràcia district of Barcelona, Catalonia,Spain.It was designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and built in theears 1900 to 1914. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Works ofAntoniGaudí”.

The attempt to canonise Antoni Gaudí i Cornet continues. Fervent Catalan Catholics expect miracles from this extraordinary man who was run over by a tram while on his way to build yet a bit more of the equally extraordinary Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family, the Sagrada Familia. Surely, though, he performed quite enough miracles in his earthly life. Visitors come to Barcelona from all over to experi-ence the animal-, vegetable- and mineral-like buildings that have made this architect’s work synonymous with the city they beguile. Barcelona equals Gaudí. This makes sense, because Gaudí was a fervent Catalan nationalist, and an equally fervent Catholic, whose architecture has been a rallying point in stone, concrete and his hallmark broken glazed tiles.

The first time I went to Barcelona, it was to see Gaudí buildings; I also saw local sol-diers taking down the street signs that read “Avenida Generalissimo Franco”. Franco despised Barcelona. Not only was it one of the key centres of opposition to his petty and spiteful fascist regime, but the city was a commercial and cultural rival to Castillian Madrid. It suffered during the Franco years, yet Gaudí’s architecture gave it a mystery, a swagger and a wilfulness that helped to keep its head held high.

DESIGN

INSPIRATION

The religious intensity of the buildings never lets up. From the lobby walls of the Casa Calvet, painted with the prayer “Ave Maria Purisima, sens pecat fou concebuda” (“con ceived without sin”), to the broken tiles through the benches of Parc Guell that read as an unbroken prayer to the Virgin, Gaudí’s Catholicism is as relent-less as it is insatiable. “It is certain,” says van Hensbergen, “that Gaudí saw himself within the long tradition of sacred Spanish architec-ture where geometric proportionality points to profound Christian verities.” And, of course, he devoted his last years exclusively to the design and construction of the Sagrada Familia. His life from then on does appear to become nutty, to say the least. Of the making of one of the facades, we learn that “chick-ens and turkeys were chloroformed, greased and quickly cast in plaster before coming around again... It was only when Gaudí de-cided to take a full life cast of Ricardo Opisso, who fainted in the process, that he realised the limitations of this technique.”

Sagrada Familia church

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Hotel ME Bar-celona is a new 300,000-square-foot tower on Barcelona’s Avinguda Diagonal, where it echoes the dynamism of Barcelona’s vertical land-marks such as the Sagrada Familia. The 380-foot-high tower, clad in anodized aluminum, contains 257 guest rooms in a rectan-gular parallel-epiped.

HOTELme

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Photos of the recently completed exterior facade that architect Toyo Ito has designed for the new Suites Avenue Hotel in Barcelona, Spain, have begun to emerge.

Toyo Ito transformed what was previously a dull office building by creating a remarkable facade of undulating waves that he says was inspired by his love of the work of Antoni Gaudi.

The Venetian towers in the Spain’s Square are known by this name because they are depicting the belltower of the Venetian Cathedral. They were designed by Ramón Reventós in 1928 as an en-trance gate to the International Exhibi-tion of 1929, and while they are now the entrance of the Barcelona Trade Fair. They are 47 metres high and they frame the María Cristina Avenue. All along this avenue, as a cor ridor in the Fair area, there are a succession of small foun tains and columns of light. From the entrance to the Fair enclosure there is a spec tacular view of the avenue forming the base of the Montjuic Palace. There are different Fair pavilions, as the Communications and Metalurgy Pavilions, in Spain’s square or the Alphonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia Pavilions in Marquis de Foronda Square , where the Magic Fountain is placed.

SPAIN VENETIAN TOWERS

The Agbar Tower or Torre Agbar is a 21st-century skyscraper at Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, Barcelona, Spain. It was de-signed by French architecture firm Atelier Jean Nouvel in collaboration with the Span-ish b720 Arquitectos, led by Fermín Vázquez. The 142m-high tower is the third-tallest build-ing in Barcelona and home to the offices of its owner the Agbar Group, which is the holding company of Barcelona water com-pany – Aguas de Barcelona (AGBAR).

Torre Agbar Tower“Torre Agbar is the third-tallest building in Barcelona.”

Concept and designAgbar Tower was jointly designed by Jean Nouvel and b720 Arquitectos, led by Fermín Vázquez. The architectural design of the tower was inspired by the land, nature and architectural legacy of Antoni Gaudí and the hills of Montserrat.

Nouvel says: “Unlike slender spires and bell towers that typically pierce the horizons of horizontal cities, this tower is a fluid mass that bursts through the ground like a geyser un der permanent, calculated pressure.” The 38-storey tower has two non-concen trico val cylinders crowned by a glass and steel dome. There are 34 spa cious floors above ground – 28 floors for office use, three techni cal floors to centralise installa tions, one floor for the cafete ria, one for multipurpos room and one for a bird’s-eye view in the tower’s dome.

The building has four floors below ground level – two floors for a 316-seat audito rium and two for parking.

Design excellence The Agbar Tower won the 2006 Awards for Excellence organised by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in both the European edition and the world edition.

The recognition was given as an appreciation for its design, its significant role in the devel-opment of the new 22@ district in Barcelona, efficient land use, its sensitivity towards society and the environment and the economic and financial success it has achieved.

The bridge made of wood called the Rambla del Mar connects Rambla and The Maremagnum, which shows off lined shops, cinemas, bars and restaurants. It was designed by Albert Viaplana, professor of Architectural Project at the School of Architecture of Barcelona University and Helio Piñon, his partner, teaching at the school since 1970 and co-editor of Arquitecturas-bis since 1974.