Valencia Buildings by Santiago Calatrava
City of Arts and Sciences
These amazing buildings are part of Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, designed by the architects Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela. Situated on the former riverbed of the river Turia, which was drained and rerouted after a catastrophic flood in 1957.
Building Construction
The construction of these amazing, skeleton-like buildings on the sunken linear park started in 1996, with the final one opening in 2005.
See my shots Calatrava’s Liege Guillemins Station
Quoted From Wikipedia
The largest group of buildings by Calatrava is found in his birthplace, Valencia, Spain, and was built in over a decade. It includes the City of Arts and Sciences (1991–2000) and the opera house (1996–2006), all constructed on a plot of 35 hectares between a highway and a river on the east side of the city. The planetarium, like a half-sunken globe, is placed in the center, next to a large artificial lake, in which it seems to be sinking. The dome is covered by a metal screen which opens and closes, and the entrance of the dome opens like a human eye. On one side is the science museum, behind a line of leaning columns, and on the other is the newest structure, the massive shell of the opera house, described by Calatrava as a “monumental sculpture”, which gives the impression of being continually in motion.
