On Sunday we went to check out the (in)famous Torre Agbar (official site here). Agbar is short for Aguas de Barcelona, the local water company. It’s to be one of those “love-it-or-hate-it” buildings…a lot of locals I’ve spoken to hate it, call it rude names and/or joke about its shape. I’ve heard it referred to as a suppository, phallus or even — goodness gracious, dare I say it? — a pepinillo (cucumber). But if you see it at night, and/or up close, it’s hard not to be impressed. I certainly was impressed after my close-up exploration last night (my only disappointment was eventually running out of battery juice with all those long exposures on my camera!).
We stopped in the very cool and trendy Hotel Diagonal, right next door to the tower. The hotel has a very funky and retro-looking bar, with good-looking servers and an impossible-to-focus-your-eyes-on-even-when-you-haven’t-been-drinking blue bar. In fact, yes, it reminded me a lot of some places in Montreal. The staff were very friendly and not at all snooty when we asked if we could go up to the roof and take some pictures. Smart on their part, because I would definitely recommend this hotel to folks coming to Barcelona! I imagine the rooms are as cool as the rest of the place.
On the roof of the hotel (if you can figure out its high-tech elevators ;-) is a pool that looks really great at night, lit up by purple and orange lights. From the rooftop you also have a perfect vantage point to look at the Torre Agbar, which is a few hundred metres away at most. From the 10th floor you are perhaps 1/3 of the way up the tower, so you get to look both up and down at it. Inside, you can see the glow of elevators zooming up and down inside — very Blade Runner.
On November weekends, they turn on the slowly shifting lights around 8pm and they stay on until 10 or 11pm (presumably in summer things are done a bit later). We were wondering how it would light up — all at once; a slow fade; flickering bits coming on at different times. It turns out it illuminates all at once with a very quick fade-up. It’s quite dramatic, if you happen to be watching at the exact moment (which we were, out the window of the lobby bar).
Vertical panorama of Torre Agbar, before and after “ignition”.