Ike Ijeh

摘要

What do you do with a crumbling, disused 19th-century Barcelona bullring that has not been in constant use since the seventies but remains a major architectural landmark and civic symbol? Demolition, while commercially and financially attractive, is culturally untenable. Fossilisation, or the "Battersea Power Station option", retains the most visible architectural elements but condemns the building to an uncertain future of dysfunctional oblivion, which might be occasionally punctuated by futile attempts at redevelopment. This inevitably leaves renovation, a process that architect Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (B.SHP) has just completed at the newly opened £176m Las Arenas development in Barcelona, Spain.