new


opening


WORLD WORLDFOCUS


Kate Cracknell talks to the


management of Spanish operation Metropolitan about its new club in Barcelona’s Las Arenas complex


I


f the architect Richard Rogers is connected with a new development, you can be pretty sure it’s going to be a talking


point. This, after all, is the man whose practice was involved in iconic projects such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Millennium Dome in London. And so it’s proved once more with the transformation of Las Arenas, Barcelona’s emblematic bullring, into a mixed-use leisure, entertainment and office complex. Las Arenas held its fi rst bullfi ght


in 1900, but interest in the sport has diminished in Barcelona over recent years – the last bullfi ght took place there in 1977 and the sport will become illegal in Catalonia in 2012. Nevertheless, the building is a local landmark and sympathetic treatment was required. The new development – which


opened to the public at the end of March – has therefore preserved the red brick façade of the original bullring, which from the outside still looks very much as it always has. However, the whole building was elevated by one fl oor during construction to accommodate the 126 shops, restaurants, 12-screen cinema, gym/spa and car parking. But it’s the ‘piazza in the sky’ that


really puts the Rogers signature on the whole development – a habitable dish-like roof measuring 100 metres in diameter, covered by a 76-metre diameter dome, that fl oats above


34 Read Health Club Management online at healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital july 2011 © cybertrek 2011


IN THE RING


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