The new Palau Blaugrana is a 15,000-seat multi-use arena designed by Gensler, sitting right next to FC Barcelona’s Spotify Camp Nou. The façade wraps the building in continuous horizontal rods that sweep and fold in organic bands, shifting from golden to warm brown across their length. Underneath, concrete columns lift the mass off the ground, so at street level you get full glazing and people walking through.
Gensler, the firm behind the Chase Center in San Francisco, brought this project to our team as an architectural competition entry. From the start, the brief was straightforward: the smaller arena had to be the hero, not the Camp Nou next door.
We delivered four architectural renderings across two categories. The two exteriors show the arena from different moods, one a street-level composition under clear Barcelona sky with palm trees and urban life around the façade, the other a pedestrian-level approach with Barça fans moving toward the entrance on match day. The two bowl interiors do the same: one in basketball mode with banners, center-hung scoreboard, and 15,000 seats, the other set for a concert with a standing crowd on the floor, stage rigging, and full show lighting.