Barcelona Architecture, Color

L’Hospitalet, #54. Barcelona, 2018

Sometimes, it just works better in color…

In the photograph above, from left to right: the Hotel Porta Fira, then the Torre Europa complex in the Barcelona suburb of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

Below, you are looking at the Hotel Arts (one of the big twin towers down by the sea front) through the holes in the nearby “David and Goliath” sculpture (1992) by Antoni Llena i Font. Basically, you are looking through the nose hole and one of the eyesockets, if you prefer a practical explanation.

Vila Olimpica, #3. Barcelona, 2018

Ah, the uniformity of it all. This is the judicial/court complex, the “City of Justice” for Barcelona and L’Hospitalet. According to the architect, David Chipperfield, the idea was to evoke the image of a “legal factory”. Some call the building “fascist” because of its prison-like design–are the accused already guilty? I wondered if one might say that the uniformity of the structures parallels the noble ideal of a uniform application of the law to all regardless of social standing (but, ha!…the politically astute in Barcelona and throughout Spain would laugh and snort at that one).

L’Hospitalet, #55. Barcelona, 2018

And finally, two you may have seen before. These images of the Naturgy Gas building (Mare Nostrum Tower) between Vila Olímpica and Barceloneta work OK in B&W, but only marginally. Color is definitely a key element of composition here and is missed in monochrome.