The office building at 31 Europa Square at L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, designed by architects Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramón Vilalta is a recycled steel low height block with a visible structure unfolded like a powerful ribs curtain that firmly supports the building and smoothly allows light and air to penetrate it.

I planned the building exterior photographs to first communicate its kind presence on its site, then capturing the apparently tense dialogue between the project and the rest of the buildings in Europa Square and, surely and above all, to catch the complex richness of color and texture of the steel structure.

I decided to use the last afternoon lights of the setting winter sun and the diffuse light after sunset to communicate the ideas I had in mind: using this light I managed to simplify the building volumetry -I ran the obvious risk of making it too dense …- lightening its presence on my frames eliminating any deep shadows or violent highlights, and expanding the color range of the metal in both the steel skin of the project and the huge glass facades of the neighboring buildings. … Read more …

The first thing that called my attention when looking at Barcelona Rosselló Street Emma Room Mate Hotel by architects Yolanda Nadal and Luís Moneo were the many white lit pieces distributed on its façade rectangular surface and how these pieces were dissolved by the surrounding urban landscape.

The hotel façade is intentionally lightweight because of the pieces apparent motion as seen from Enric Granados Street on the left side of the building and compact when looking at the very same lit rectangles as seen coming from the right from Balmes Street.

I was specially concerned in preserving the subtle connection between the white texture inside the lit pieces in the night façade and the detail in the huge black area in wich the white rectangles are rhythmically arranged: although exposure and contrast were difficult to control, losing detail in both blacks and whites would have meant a quite unpleasant look in my photographs far from what I saw and felt when I first noticed the hotel delicate urban presence.