Isozaki Atea

This guide to Isozaki Atea in Bilbao opens with a dispute over an actual staircase: in 2006 the city let architect Arata Isozaki build a footway linking his twin glass towers to Santiago Calatrava's Zubizuri bridge next door, cutting a metal bar from Calatrava's original structure to do it. It follows Calatrava's lawsuit over his moral rights as the bridge's author, and the shifting court rulings that followed. It also traces Isozaki's own design, granite steps meant to echo Rome's Spanish Steps between the tallest residential towers in the Basque Country.