Torres Colon
Encyclopedia
Torres de Colón is a highrise composed by two twin towers located at the Plaza de Colón in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. It is currently valued at $116 million and was designed by the architect Antonio Lamela. The building is the twelfth tallest in the Spanish capital (counting the CTBA
CTBA
Cuatro Torres Business Area is a business district located in the Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid , on the former Ciudad Deportiva of Real Madrid. The area contains the tallest skyscrapers in Madrid and Spain...

 towers) with its 116 meter height and 23 floors and was constructed in 1976 to designs by the Madrid architect Antonio Lamela. It was the headquarters of the company Rumasa
Rumasa
Rumasa was a holding company founded by Spanish entrepreneur José María Ruiz Mateos and expropriated by the Spanish government on February 23, 1983.In 1982 Rumasa constituted 2% of the Spanish GDP...

, during which time its name was changed to Torres de Jerez (Towers of Jerez), in honour of the home town of the company.

It is found in and dominates the Plaza de Colón
Plaza de Colón (Madrid)
Plaza de Colón is located in the Alonso Martínez district of Madrid, Spain. This plaza and its fountain commemorate the explorer Christopher Columbus, whose name in Spanish was Cristóbal Colón.- Monuments :...

, one of the major commercial centres in Madrid. The twin buildings are known locally as "El Enchufe" or "The Plug" for the plug-like structure that binds them.

The towers have a suspended structure; the building consists of two pillars together on top of a platform from which hang two large towers with perimeter beams six feet singing with pendulums each floor with cable-stayed steel cables. Construction commenced with the concrete footings, the two central pillars and the upper platform. Then the towers were built from top to bottom, from the upper platform plant to plant closer to the base of the building. At the base, three floors (six floors including basements) were built from the bottom up.

The glass facades are covered with maroon and green and there is a structure (the 'plug' added later) at the top. The building houses offices of various companies and, on the lower floors, shops.

On 14 November 2008, Reuters reoprted that the virtualtourist website had published a list with the ten ugliest buildings and monuments in the world, according to the results of a survey of their editors and readers. Torres de Colón came in sixth place.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK