City of Arts and Sciences

Brief information

The City of Arts and Sciences was built not on an ordinary urban plot, but on the drained bed of the Turia River. As a result, the complex reads as a long chain of structures laid out in the former riverbed: parks, streams and pools appeared alongside the buildings, and a separate cable-stayed bridge crosses the dry channel.

Santiago Calatrava’s project began in 1989 as the idea for a science museum, but grew into an independent architectural complex. Here, an opera house, a planetarium with IMAX, a science museum, a garden-gallery, an open-air oceanographic park and a covered event space stand side by side. What matters is not the list of functions in itself, but the way they are assembled in one place: culture, science and recreation were given separate forms, yet work as a single urban fragment.

What to notice first

It is worth comparing how the complex’s different functions are turned into different types of space. L’Hemisfèric combines IMAX, a planetarium and a laser theater, so its role is connected with display and spectacle. The Prince Felipe Science Museum is responsible for another scenario: not viewing, but exploration. The Umbracle is described as a gallery and garden: an intermediate place between architecture and landscaped space.

It is also worth noting separately that the complex does not end with the buildings. L’Oceanogràfic is described as an open-air oceanographic park, the Agora as a covered venue for concerts and sporting events, and the Assut de l’Or bridge crosses the dry bed of the Turia River. Its white cable-stayed structure and 125-meter tower add a vertical accent to the elongated site; the tower is described as the highest point in the city. In this way, the former riverbed became not a backdrop, but a framework along which different forms of public life are arranged.