City of Culture of Galicia Santiago de Compostela, Spanish Building Photos, Design Images

City of Culture of Galicia, Spain, Europe

Cidade da Cultura de Galicia Santiago de Compostela design by Eisenman Architects

10 Mar 2011

Cidade da Cultura de Galicia Santiago de Compostela

City of Culture of Galicia

Location: Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Date: 1999 – ongoing

Design: Eisenman Architects

photograph : Pasajes Espanoles Courtesy the Foundation of the City of Culture of Galicia

The City of Culture is a new cultural center for the Province of Galicia in northwestern Spain. Its 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).

Tiled building roof with flowing form:

photo : Roland Halbe Courtesy Eisenman Architects

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.

photos : Roland Halbe Courtesy Eisenman Architects

The original center of Santiago conforms to a figure/ground urbanism in which buildings are figural, or solid, and the streets are residual, or void spaces. Through this mapping operation, our project emerges as a curving surface that is neither figure nor ground but both a figured ground and a figured figure that supercede the figure-ground urbanism of the old city. Santiago’s medieval past appears not as a form of representational nostalgia but as a new yet somehow familiar presence found in a new form.

photos : Roland Halbe Courtesy Eisenman Architects

The six buildings of the project are conceived as three pairs: the Museum of Galicia and the International Art Center; the Center for Music and Performing Arts and the Central Services building; and the Library of Galicia and Galician Archives. Visitor’s experiences of any given building will be affected by its relationship to its immediate partner.

The caminos, or pedestrian streets, that wind between the buildings also open onto a public square, which is bordered by the six buildings and features landscape and water elements.

photos : Roland Halbe Courtesy Eisenman Architects

The largest building is the Performing Arts Theater, which stands 42.5 meters high and contains all of the spaces and technologies required to host the international opera and symphonic music circuit. There are two auditoria: a large theater of more than 1,500 seats that can be adjusted for opera, ballet, and concert performances, and a 450-seat theater that can be used for chamber music and recitals, dance and drama performances, conventions and colloquiums.

A multi-tiered lobby allows access from below-grade parking and from the pedestrian camino to a four-level theater arrayed in a classic horseshoe shape. The heights of all of the buildings rise in gentle curves that seem to reconstruct the shape of the hilltop with their collective rooflines.

photos : Manuel Gonzalez Vicente Courtesy the Foundation of the City of Culture of Galicia

Cultura de Galicia – Major Components
The Galician Museum (172,000 square feet)
International Art Center (135,000 square feet)
The Center for Music and Performing Arts (220,000 square feet)
Library of Galicia (122,000 square feet)
Galician Archives (86,000 square feet)
Central Services and Administration (50,000 square feet)

photos : Manuel Gonzalez Vicente Courtesy the Foundation of the City of Culture of Galicia

City of Culture of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela Awards

Eighth and Ninth International Exhibitions of Architecture, Venice Biennale, 2002 & 2004
Progressive Architecture, Architectural Design Award, 2003
First prize, Invited International Design Competition, 1999

Eisenman Architects

photos : Manuel Gonzalez Vicente Courtesy the Foundation of the City of Culture of Galicia

Cidade da Cultura de Galicia – Building Information

Size: one million sqft
Start: 2000
Total area: 173 acres

Surrounding the built area of the CCG is the Arboretum of Galicia: an area of gardens and native woodland, conceived as both a recreational and an educational facility.

City of Culture of Galicia Santiago de Compostela images / information from Eisenman Architects

Location: City of Culture of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, southwestern Europe

Santiago de Compostela Architecture – Selection

Musical Studies Center
Design: Ensamble Studio
Musical Studies Centre Santiago de Compostela

SGAE Central Office
Design: Ensamble Studio
SGAE Headquarters

New Buildings in Northern Spain

Óptics Lafuente, Pontevedra, Northwest Spain
Design: NAN Arquitectos

photograph : Iván Casal Nieto
Óptics Lafuente Pontevedra
Both the interior and exterior vertical walls are covered with gloss black ceramic, providing a very homogeneous appearance.

Cocktail Station, San Sebastián
Design: Mecanismo Architects

image Courtesy architecture office
San Sebastián Cocktail Station
Mecansimo results from the combination of a profound interest in materials and a careful execution of ideas, all this developed with a clear obsession for investigation and innovation of new concepts.