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Architects: CMV Architects
- Year: 2008
Text description provided by the architects. The Barcelo Raval Hotel has become one of the most representative buildings of Barcelona in a few years.It is located in the heart of the city, within Raval district, one of the most modern areas of the Catalan capital.
The hotel was built as an elliptical construction, made up from two basements, a ground floor and ten high-rise floors. The project was born with some specific volumes marked by "PERI" of Ravalin Barcelona, and all the attention goes in the direction of the axes of the elliptical plant.
In the same way, depending on the direction from which it is seen, the building is perceived in a more or less volumetric way. The main objective is to allow viewers to perceive the formal continuity of the building from outside, as well as, two large volumetric pillars, on the ground floor, which withstand all the activities related to hotel management, leaving the rest of the floor free.
The purity of the facade provides a big sculptural expression to the elliptical volumes although the cavities do not define or distort its formal strength; a stainless steel skin standardizes the volumes, acting as an aesthetic element as well as a filter of looks and impertinent sights.
From the inside, complete privacy can be enjoyed, while facing the vision of the city roofs, an unprecedented experience never offered before in Barcelona. Inside the ground floor, the hotel opens itself, deleting the partitions between the different areas, sharing a single space around the central core, and allowing for multiple uses, without losing the sense of a unique volume.
The rooms’ floor sare distributed around the outside skin, disintegrating the unique spaces to extend the relationship with the exterior, creating space and vanishing corridors. On the covered floor, a pool has been fit in and there also isa viewpoint balcony over the whole city, allowing sightseers to perceive the old part of Barcelona from the air.
In short, it is a project open to the city, whose façade tries not to create conflicts with the environment, remaining neutral. Its volume in itself already contains the necessary power of settlement in the Ramblaas a public building. In collaboration with Jose Maria Guillen and Bartolomé Blanco Cursach Far (Barceló Hotels & Resorts) and Jordi Gali.
