Torre Agbar, Barcelona, Spain

The torpedo in the middle of Barcelona.Height: 142 meters

Cost to build: US$130 million

Completion date: 2004

Fast fact: The design is inspired by the power and lightness of a geyser shooting up, touching the skies of Barcelona.
“It has become not only a cultural symbol for Barcelona, but also a magnet for groups looking to bring attention to political issues.” -- A. Eugene Kohn.

Torre Agbar may have the look a bullet, but it doesn’t have the metallic touch like other skyscrapers. Its design was inspired by the hills of Montserrat, letting it morph quietly into the most visible landmark of the city of blue and red.

The 144-meter-high building has two cylindrical layers. One topped by polished aluminum and the second clear and translucent glass with 40 different colors.

With a total of 4,500 yellow, blue, pink and red lights placed over the facade, the sensation of Barcelona’s skyline helps illuminate the city with floodlights at night, making it the most discernible figure for miles, after Lionel Messi.

Overall structure

This is not a tower. It is not a skyscraper in the American sense of the expression: it is a unique growth in the middle of this rather calm city. But it is not the slender, nervous verticality of the spires and bell towers that often punctuate horizontal cities. Instead, it is a fluid mass that has perforated the ground - a geyser under a permanent calculated pressure.

The surface of this construction evokes the water: smooth and continuous, but also vibrating and transparent because it manifests itself in coloured depths - uncertain, luminous and nuanced. This architecture comes from the earth but does not have the weight of stone. It could even be the faraway echo of old formal Catalan obsessions, carried by a mysterious wind from the coast of Montserrat.

The uncertainties of matter and light make the campanile of Agbar vibrate in the skyline of Barcelona: a faraway mirage day and night; a precise marker to the entry of the new diagonale that starts at Plaça de las Glorias. This singular object becomes a new symbol for an international city.