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Week 13_Valencia
The City of Calatrava. Well, it is the home town of the famous Calatrava and he sure is making quite a statement with his relatively new Cuidad de Arts y Sciences. The five building complex boasts soaring elegant forms that ignore any and all of the surrounding architecture. The complex puts a label on the city, a label of liberation from the rectangle and other monotonous forms that seems to define most of the architecture seen day after day. Calatrava is definitely a contemporary architect, yet he seems to more of an engineer as anyone who has visited any of his buildings can attest to. How? is usually the question that "pops" into mind when looking at one of his structures - How does this stand up? and that is the great question and element that makes Calatrava so famous. Even though the independent buildings within the Arts and Sciences Center do not coincide with each other, they are so individually intriguing and set on a "water based" grid they become the art and the science - they become the face of what they represent. Calatrava...how do you come up with these designs? we may never know...
As for Valencia, the city was beautiful. It is somewhat of a mix between Bilbao and Seville. And unlike Gerona where the city turned its back to the river, Valencia displays a new concept of the river, where a park winds through the city as a "living green river." (It may have been a river, which I'm assuming it was, and it was turned into a park that cuts through the city and connects to the Mediterranean). All in all, Valencia was worth the trip, from the quiet Old City to the Contemporary Calatrava City it was quite an amazing city. 
Cool Architecture Note: the Valencia Roman Ruins are housed by a steel support structure, underground, and at grade level they are covered by a glass roof with a thin layer of water above the glass, which provides for a beautiful reflection of the surrounding buildings at night. 
The City of Calatrava. Well, it is the home town of the famous Calatrava and he sure is making quite a statement with his relatively new Cuidad de Arts y Sciences. The five building complex boasts soaring elegant forms that ignore any and all of the surrounding architecture. The complex puts a label on the city, a label of liberation from the rectangle and other monotonous forms that seems to define most of the architecture seen day after day. Calatrava is definitely a contemporary architect, yet he seems to more of an engineer as anyone who has visited any of his buildings can attest to. How? is usually the question that "pops" into mind when looking at one of his structures - How does this stand up? and that is the great question and element that makes Calatrava so famous. Even though the independent buildings within the Arts and Sciences Center do not coincide with each other, they are so individually intriguing and set on a "water based" grid they become the art and the science - they become the face of what they represent. Calatrava...how do you come up with these designs? we may never know...
As for Valencia, the city was beautiful. It is somewhat of a mix between Bilbao and Seville. And unlike Gerona where the city turned its back to the river, Valencia displays a new concept of the river, where a park winds through the city as a "living green river." (It may have been a river, which I'm assuming it was, and it was turned into a park that cuts through the city and connects to the Mediterranean). All in all, Valencia was worth the trip, from the quiet Old City to the Contemporary Calatrava City it was quite an amazing city. 
Cool Architecture Note: the Valencia Roman Ruins are housed by a steel support structure, underground, and at grade level they are covered by a glass roof with a thin layer of water above the glass, which provides for a beautiful reflection of the surrounding buildings at night. 
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