| It's all very well building extensions to our galleries, but is ...
A few days ago, as I was wandering around Madrid's Prado museum, mesmerised by its marvellous Tintoretto exhibition (the first large assembly of his works since 1937), Spain's Minister of Culture was unveiling the Prado's £92m extension - in Barcelona. Tate Modern's annexe, given the go-ahead last week, will not be as far from its parent, a matter of yards away on London's South Bank. The Louvre in Paris is eschewing annexes for a more profitable enterprise - being paid a fortune to set up a Louvre in Abu Dhabi. There, it will face competition from yet another Guggenheim, the biggest of them all, designed, as is the one in Bilbao, by Frank Gehry. There are also Guggenheims in New York, Venice, Berlin and Las Vegas (inside a huge casino hotel). Paris's Pompidou Centre is setting up a branch in Shanghai; the Rodin museum is negotiating with São Paolo in Brazil; St Petersburg's Hermitage is flirting with Rome.
Barcelona: Hesperia Tower
Among the recent entrants in Barcelona's never-ending urban face-lift is the new five-star Hesperia Tower by the British architect Richard Rogers, who was awarded the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honor, last month. The 280-room hotel including more than 43 suites has its own 54,000-square-foot convention center that is somehow discreetly placed off the expansive black-granite lobby/lounge. The interior design is all about modernist furniture and high-tech fabrics; everything seems to have a pewter-lam thread running through it or a scrunched-up gauzy perma-wrinkle. Mr. Rogers's trademark exo-skeletal design structural beams painted bright red and blue is an eye-catcher. And what looks like a spaceship that has landed atop the hotel is Evo, a 55-seat restaurant by the chef Santi Santamaria, who has won Michelin Stars.
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