Jean Nouvel’s Torre Agbar skyscraper has been sold for the second time in just three years, with its site in Barcelona’s emerging technology district struggling to hold onto tenants.
Merlin Properties paid €142 million (£123 million) for the 38-storey tower, originally designed by the French architect for the water company Agbar Group.
The Spanish developer plans to invest €15 million (£13 million) to refurbish the famously phallic-shaped office block, which is Barcelona’s third-tallest building. It will also convert the interior for multi-company occupation.
But it becomes the Torre Agbar’s third owner in as many years, and both of its past occupants have described the building as impractical.
The Agbar Group commissioned the project for a site in Barcelona’s Poblenou district near the city’s Plaça de les Glòries, and it was completed in 2005.
When the company failed to fill all the offices in the 142-metre tower, it tried and failed to rent out the remaining floors — resulting in its sale to the equity firm Emin Capital and hotelier Westmont Hospitality Group in 2013.
The group planned to convert the block into a 400-room hotel, but abandoned its plans in late 2016 following the rejection of its activity licence application by the city council.
“We can not continue to devote energy and resources to a project that, after so long, we are not clear that can see the light,” said the group, according to Spanish newspaper El País.
The recent acquisition by Merlin Properties is expected to see the tower — which recalls Norman Foster’s so-called Gherkin in London — continue its life as offices in Barcelona’s burgeoning technology district, close to its new design museum.
“Unlike slender spires and bell towers that typically pierce the horizons of horizontal cities, this tower is a fluid mass that bursts through the ground like a geyser under permanent, calculated pressure,” Nouvel said of the building’s form.
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