Jungle Fever: Nouvel Hotel in Barcelona

Silkscreen glass encloses bath. All photos by DC

The June issue of Architectural Record includes my report from Jean Nouvel's Renaissance Barcelona Fira Hotel. You can read it in full here.

Seldom have I had to work on a report from a poolside rooftop deck over a shot of tequila (with the charming Mexican architect Patricia Meneses, of whom I wrote about in Record's Design Vanguard in 2010; finally we met). Seldom have I worked up my notes over a candlelight dinner on a 14th floor greenhouse restaurant (with the voluble and entertaining collaborating architect, Josep Ribas, and Nouvel's man on the scene, the charming and well-informed Damien Rinchon - with a midnight phone call from Nouvel himself to inflate me even further). And seldom have I been able to study the custom details and sleek Nouvel-designed furnishings from the comfort of a queen-size bed (for which Record picked up the tab, to insure my critical independence).  I tell you, it's tough out there.

More on Nouvel's high-rise jungle, or what he calls an oasis:

"The literal oasis is a central open-air garden that runs vertically through the hotel's 26 floors, filling every level with palm trees and other vegetation. This vertiginous, north-facing void, animated by zigzagging fire stairs, rises between two solid volumes containing guest rooms. ... As project leader Damien Renchon points out, 'It's really a vertical motel.' "

"On the figurative side, Nouvel carries the oasis concept into a branding theme for the facades. Inside every guest room, he cuts a window out of the structural precast-concrete wall in the shape of the jagged crown of a palm tree. Outside, these openings are visible behind a continuous curtain wall of milk-white glass, silkscreened with palms at different scales, that blurs the reading of floor lines.... The result, both inside and out, is unexpected, campy, and fun."

 Urban Oasis
Renaissance Barcelona Fira Hotel
By Jean Nouvel
Architectural Record, June 2013, pages 242 - 244.

Palm frond window opening or artillery hit?

With view of Toyo Ito's Porta Fira Hotel

Those windows from outside...

The gardens drop down on the right

From the rooftop bar and pool...

...through 26 floors...

sdsds

Gallery in this "Vertical Motel"

Dizzy...

Effects of light and reflection in the lobby

Breakfast on the 14th floor

It's time to get horizontal....