Hotel Arts Barcelona
Glass skyscraper hotel beside an Olympic marina, with Frank Gehry's gilded fish sculpture crouched at its base.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Hotel Arts Barcelona traces how a stretch of working docks and rusted factories became a glass tower and a new Olympic marina ahead of the 1992 Games, built by architect Bruce Graham, the man behind Chicago's Willis Tower and John Hancock Center. It follows the odd path to opening, from a brief debut at just ten stories to the finished forty-four-floor building that became the first Ritz-Carlton hotel in Europe. Down at the waterline, it turns to a second structure from the same Olympics, a Frank Gehry sculpture whose gilded steel skin does more than decorate. Listen for what that shape is actually hiding underneath.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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