Ecca collection

Torre Agbar

The cigar-like shape of Barcelona’s 38-storey Torre Agbar was inspired, according to its principal architect Jean Nouvel, both by the image of a geyser rising into the air and the profile of the nearby mountain of Montserrat.

Images courtesy of Rafael Vargas

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ROC Carolus School

The first impression of the ROC Carolus building is deceptive, and deliberately so. Passers-by and visitors see a ‘crazy’ building, a fractured and playful facade, with irregularly polygonal windows breaking up the variety of shades of grey in the prepainted metal cladding that floats above a glazed ground floor. This cladding in turn has ‘fault lines’ along it, as if the whole could shatter in an instant. It takes a moment to realise that this is disguising the fact that the building in fact consists of relatively regular blocks joined by glazing. The overall assembly is largely rectilinear, but with one end curving to a point like the prow of a ship. Far from this being an example of unexplained exuberance, careful consideration has gone into making the facade, like the rest of the building, hard working and affordable.

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Oceania Shopping Centre

The Oceania Shopping Centre sits at a major road junction in the heart of Moscow. Bordered on one side by a major boulevard and Victory Park on one side, and high-density housing on the other, the site offered the Asadov Architectural Studio a major challenge. As a shopping centre, the building would serve an ‘introverted’ audience, one that is focussed on what is inside. But it also needed to remain connected to the external, divergent landscape. The building also had to meet the client’s requirements for a light, modern, and attractive structure.

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