Torre Glòries, Barcelona

Torre Glòries is the rounded skyscraper rising from Plaça de les Glòries, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel. Its unusual profile was conceived as a water geyser bursting upward, while its coloured glass skin gives the tower a shifting appearance as daylight changes. The building belongs to the high-tech architectural style and became the headquarters of Aigües de Barcelona when it opened in 2005.

Look at the façade itself: an outer concrete structure carries glass panels, while another layer of translucent glass elements sits behind it. Together they soften the building’s appearance and help regulate daylight and heat. After dark, 4,000 LED lights can produce countless colour combinations across the surface.

The tower rises 142 metres through 35 floors, with four underground levels, and its structure uses two oval concrete cylinders that do not touch. Near the upper part, the concrete gives way to a glass dome, with the final floors projecting outward. The public viewpoint occupies floor 30, at 125 metres, and offers a 360-degree panorama reaching toward landmarks such as the Sagrada Família, Montjuïc, Tibidabo and the Mediterranean.

Inside the dome, Tomás Saraceno’s Cloud Cities Barcelona provides an immersive artwork with routes suspended between 4 and 10 metres above the floor. The tower also became a famous setting for Catalonia’s televised New Year countdowns from 2006 to 2009.