The city of Barcelona has been known since the early twentieth century as the home of Art Nouveau. Now it has also become a center for contemporary international architecture. This follow-up to "In Detail: Barcelona Art Nouveau" looks at the most notable buildings of the last 10 years, with detailed photographic reports on Josep Llums Mateo's Barcelona Convention Center, Richard Meier's Museum of Contemporary Art, Carles Ferrater's Botanical Gardens and Institute, Rafael Moneo's Barcelona Auditorium concert hall, Herzog & de Meuron's Forum Building, Josep Llins's block of buildings in the Fort Pienc neighborhood, EMBT's Santa Caterina Market, Clotet & Paricio's Forum-area retirement home and Jean Nouvel's Agbar Tower. The complexity of this new generation of structures, and the variety of local and international talent on view, are auspicious signs for the Barcelona of the twenty-first century.

The project for the expansion of the Granada Parque de las Ciencias, on the river Genil, called for the construction of a single roof with slight inflexions that recalls an open hand, under which are housed the different programme spaces interconnected in a spatial continuum. The empty space that communicates the large boxes or containers of the different programmes - Macroscopio, Biodomo, Tecnoforo, Health Sciences, Al Andalus, auditoriums and temporary and permanent exhibition spaces - structures communications and logistics and relates with the Park's overall activity programme. The spatial structure ensures great flexibility in uses and situations which interconnect routes and themes. Most of the projects with topography in general terms replace the continuous quality of the roof with a succession of planes and porticos of varying form. In this way, the constructional autonomy and spatial quality of the roof as a continuous element become a sequential relation of intercommunicated spaces.