Galicia, Spain’s “City of Culture”
Photo courtesy Eisenman Architects
The Discovery Channel show “Build it Bigger” has my attention. Boyishly geeky host and architect Danny Forster treks around the world bringing his viewers to some of the world’s most difficult and colossal engineering projects. Not only does the show provide insight into each project’s architectural significance, but Danny gets down and dirty with the crew spraying cement, hanging drywall and constructing steel framing as these marvels take shape. (This job might be cooler than Samantha Brown’s travel gig.)
A recent show explored Galicia, Spain’s “City of Culture”, a complex series of buildings built on the site of a famous medelival pilgrimage destination on a small hill overlooking Santiago de Compostela. According to ARCspace.com, “The design evolves from the superposition of three sets of information. First, the street plan of the medieval center of Santiago is overlaid on a topographic map of the hillside site (which overlooks the city). Second, a modern Cartesian grid is laid over these medieval routes. Third, through computer modeling software, the topography of the hillside is allowed to distort the two flat geometries, thus generating a topological surface that repositions old and new in a simultaneous matrix never before seen.“
Location: Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Architect: Peter Eisenman
Tenants: Museum of Galician History and the New Technologies center, the Music Theater and Central Services building; and the Galician Library and Periodicals Archive
Status: under construction
Groundbreaking: 2000
Estimated Completion: 2010-2011
Size: one million square feet
Museum of Galician History: 172,000 square feet
New Technologies Center: 135,000 square feet
Music Theater: 220,000 square feet
Galician Library:122,000 square feet
Periodicals Archive: 86,000 square feet
Central Services building: 50,000 square feet
(Source: http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/build-it-bigger/project-pages/spain/spain.html)
Posted by Marcelle Turner on Jun. 15, 2009