In the Hospitalet de Llobregat district, by the south gates of Barcelona, a black and white twin tower 110 metres tall emerges from a garden of palm trees. This privileged space in Barcelona’s new Plaça d’Europa is a garden full of light and shade, delightfully fresh and cool. The Hotel Renaissance is an invitation to luxury, its entrance marked by a generous canopy of living green vegetation. Two external walkways tie the two buildings together along their entire height. The walkways host a luxuriant vertical landscape, bordered by the guestroom passageways and criss-crossed by terraces and staircases in an interplay reminiscent of Piranesi. At mid-height, a garden wreathes the building in a cold greenhouse, filtering the sun. Behind the greenery, the hotel restaurant can just be glimpsed. At the top of the building, a ring of palms rises over the terraces of the bedroom suites, and the fitness centre and swimming pool.
The east, south and west façades are luminous, white, almost blinding. The north face is matt black. There are no windows, only openings that stem from, and blend in with, the plant motifs screen-printed onto the glass and esgrafiados, or etched, into the concrete.
The material is ever-changing. Day and night, the leaves of the palm trees cast their shadows over the floors, façades and passageways. The light is either direct, filtered or reflected. Shadows are cast and silhouetted in a constant shadow play. The light is never still and creeps all the way into the rooms and over the walls and ceilings, curtains and sheets...
Each guest is able to find a space appropriate to their needs and pleasures among the three hundred and fifty-eight rooms, rooms that range from perfectly proportioned, hyperconnected ‘business’ rooms for people who might be conference delegates for a night, to ‘boudoir’ rooms for shared pleasures; from junior suites to suites where bedroom, bathroom and livingroom work in synergy and can be combined according to the guest’s desires. It’s another way of living your Barcelona sojourn.