Although the Catalan political situation remains mired in uncertainty, companies seem to be regaining confidence in Barcelona as a location for their corporate headquarters, following the city's 2017 loss of the opportunity to host the European Medicines Agency (EMA) at Torre Glòries (formerly known as Torre Agbar) to Amsterdam.
Now, however, Facebook has chosen this tower—designed by architects Jean Nouvel and Fermín Vázquez (b720)—as the site for an operations center to combat and eliminate harmful content, such as fake news, on the social network.
https://www.archdaily.com/1114033/facebook-sets-up-offices-to-combat-fake-news-in-barcelonas-agbar-towerJavier García Librero
Barcelona is a city where architecture has long served as a laboratory of urban experimentation, each era leaving its mark on the city's fabric. From the dense streets of the Gothic Quarter to the ornate interiors of the Palau de la Música Catalana, the city expanded outward through Ildefons Cerdà's Eixample, a stage where Gaudí and his contemporaries challenged the rules of form, scale, and ornamentation. These experiments defined a local identity and culminated in the Sagrada Família, a vision that continues into the 21st century through the integration of advanced technology.
The city's twentieth-century transformation forged an architectural language with global influence. The principles of International Modernism are embodied in Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, while later developments—from Bofill's explorations in collective housing to the urban interventions of the 1992 Olympics—reshaped the skyline and the city's relationship to its waterfront. Subsequent contemporary projects continue to negotiate form, landscape, and urban scale, contributing to a layered and evolving city.
Walt Disney Concert Hall. Image Courtesy of Gehry Partners, LLP
Internationally acclaimed architect Frank Gehry (born 28 February 1929) has been headlining architectural news platforms since he established his Los Angeles practice in 1962 and remodeled his home in Santa Monica. Notorious for his expressive use of form (and its-sometimes inflationary effect on project budgets), Gehry is best known for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which fellow architect Philip Johnson once dubbed “the greatest building of our time.”
