Nov 04
Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia
2005 at 11.44 am posted by Veerle
Last month a remarkable building was inaugurated by Spain’s Queen Sofia. I’m talking about the new Valencia opera house “Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía”. Its nautical forms suggest its closeness to the sea and its setting in the former bed of the river Turia. The metal roof is like a feather held up by two supports.
Standing in a lush setting of over 87.000 square meters of gardens and reflecting pools covering 10.000 square meters with surrounding paths, the Palau de les Arts has four large halls.
The building was designed by Valencia-born architect Santiago Calatrava. Calatrava has many honors and awards behind his name such as the Gold Medal of the Institute of Structural Engineers, London and the City of Toronto Urban Design Award to name a few. He has spend 14 years on this project which was built to compete with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
Some facts of the used materials:
- Over 77.000 cubic meters of concrete
- 275.000 cubic meters of earth movement
- 1.750linear meters of piles
- 38.500 square meters of granite
- Over 20.000 square meters of "trencadís"
- 1.450 door units
- 3.360 square meters of glass
- 20.000.000 kilograms of structural corrugated steel
- 10.000.000 kilograms of structural steel
Valencia is also hoping that the building will earn its place on the list of must-see cultural destinations. Whatever the outcome Spain has another landmark that is on par with a nighttime luminosity similar to that of the world famous Sydney Opera House.
18served
1
Oh my...that’s absolutely beautiful!
2
Very pretty!
Looks quite a bit like a trilobite.
3
It looks like some sort of Darth Vader helmet from the front. I give it a thumbs down. sorry.
4
Nice. Reminds me of buildings in final fantasy 8.
5
If you like Calatrava’s buildings, you have to see the two creations he made for my home island Tenerife. The most famous is the Tenerife’s Auditorium and the less famous International Center of Congress of Tenerife. A must in a Tenerife travel.
6
Another reason to add to my (long) list of why I should go back to Spain.
7
beautiful.
8
Interesting. It immediately reminded me of one of the railway station in Lyon, France.
Turns out it is the same architect.
Lyon St Exupery
9
Hey, you can see it in Google Earth. Go to Valencia and find the Valencia Opera House.
10
It is interesting, but do agree it looks like a Darth Vader helmet!
We were going to have an addition put onto our museum here in D.C., The Corcoran by Frank Gehry, but it ended up becoming way too expensive and they abolished the plans for it, this summer. Also some were not crazy about the architectural plans, and the contrast between the old building and the new was a little extreme. But there was a competition between Gehry, Calatrava, and one other architect for this original addition/wing. I liked Calatrava’s design, but they selected Gehry.
11
I love Calatrava’s work. Calatrava has an exception command of structural engineering giving his buildings a simple honesty in their design even though they are stunning. On the other hand, Gehry’s work tends to be more of a pure abstract form - concealing the true structure beneath the skin.
12
I think that Gehry’s museum in Bilbao, Spain is one of the best examples of his work, because I love the way it blends with the environment in that city - sittin as it does over the water, and it also has an industrial feeling to it, but in a very artistic sort of way. Unfortunately, the design he made for the Corcoran was only a small, miniature of something like the Bilbao museum, where there were three large titanium “ripple -shaped cones” coming across what would have been the entrance to the new art school, and the museum would be housed inside of that with some intricate bi-or tri-level floor plan. It looked very interesting, but the Corcoran is an old, Beaux-Arts style French building, built back in the 1800’s, and this addition really didn’t go with the old building at, all, or the environment here in D.C., for that matter. It might have been neat, but it could have also spoiled the original building in the end. I guess it was just not meant to be, because the Board decided against the cost of it, and I think they were afraid it wasn’t feasible, although the building is in desperate need of an addition and a lot of refurbishment to the old section.
The Calatrava design looked more like some type of winged bird coming off of the roof. It would have been very striking, but again, probably unaffordable. I think if you are building from scratch it makes sense, but trying to add on gets more difficult.
13
But that looks nothing like my awesome suburban home that’s made of paper-thin walls and has a 4 car garage. Those crazy architects.
14
Hi
Those Photos are great.Which was the camera you had used to shoot it.
15
Mahesh, I didn’t shoot them myself… though, I wish I did ;-)
16
I live in valencia. I love the building, when you walk around it is not “in front of you”, you just feel like it surrounds you.
The worst part is that here government is wasting all the money in modern in huge fancy monuments and people here also need medic care, services and all that boring stuff… .I call it “Keops Complex”
I’d also like people to know the work of other spanish architects (undortunately it seems that Calatrava is the only one whe have) :P
17
Very beautiful photo, impressing architecture, special the nightshoots are nwondefull.
Must there also absolutely times, in order to make with my Nikon D200 long-term-exposed photos!
Yours sincerely from Hamburg Nadim.LB
18
it does sort of look like a helmet, not to mention perhaps a little too reminicent of the Sydney Opera house. But the entire site is quite remarkable looking.Proving, I guess, that Calatrava is hands down the best engineer on earth, though maybe not the best architect.