Valencia's "Transformation"
From the travel section of today's Boston Globe....
Valencia exudes the fine arts of transformation
By Necee Regis, Globe Correspondent | November 26, 2006
VALENCIA, Spain -- If your travels haven't taken you to Valencia recently, you're in for a pleasant surprise. This formerly sleepy city on the Mediterranean coast has transformed itself, literally, through two ambitious and impressive public projects.First, Valencia found a world-class architect to design a spectacular series of buildings along 86 acres of abandoned riverbed -- though calling Santiago Calatrava's sculptural structures "buildings" is a bit like calling Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling a "painting."
The project Calatrava -- a native son -- helped develop, the City of Arts and Sciences , is a futuristic vision built in steel, glass, concrete, and white ceramic tiles. This city-within-a-city, designed to combine education with entertainment and leisure, includes Europe's largest aquarium, a 450,00-square- foot science museum, a planetarium and IMAX theater, and a performing arts center with two performance halls where Zubin Mehta and Loren Maazel preside over opera, ballet, and orchestral music.
Walking through the new city is an adventure in itself. Calatrava wanted his creation to represent the sea and sky of the Mediterranean, and the brilliant white structures and reflecting pools do indeed produce intense reflections (on a sunny day , sunglasses and a hat with a brim are advised). Whimsy also plays a role in the architecture: The performing arts center resembles a gigantic white helmet and the planetarium/IMAX structure resembles the world's largest eye surrounded by two huge lakes.
It's a walk of more than a mile from the performing arts building to the aquarium (comfortable shoes also advised), which was designed by the late Félix Candela , a Mexican architect born in Spain. The series of white hyperbolic paraboloid roofs set within a nature reserve fits right into the city's contemporary design. With more than 500 species of marine life housed here, including dolphins, white whales, sea lions, fish, and wetland birds, you could easily spend a day at the aquarium .
Most impressive is the fact that construction on this project began in 1997 and was completed in 2005, although residence towers in the area remain a work in progress.
"Valencia has changed so much in the past 10 years that people here don't recognize their own city," said Patricia Pico, who works at the City of Arts and Sciences.
The city's second large-scale project involves the waterfront where, again, Valencia has taken a downtrodden area and turned it into something remarkable, almost in the blink of an eye.
"Valencia gave its back to the sea. Now we want to change that -- to be open to the sea," said Pico.
Nothing spurs progress like a deadline. In 2003, Switzerland won the America's Cup , bringing the famed sailing competition back to Europe for the first time in 152 years. The landlocked Swiss chose Valencia to host the 2007 event and for the past two years the city has worked feverishly -- and successfully -- to transform an abandoned section of an active commercial harbor (one of the largest in Europe) into a viable America's Cup site.
There are 12 new buildings that serve as headquarters for each competing team, including the defender, Alinghi, and the US team, BMW-Oracle Racing from San Francisco. To keep the racing yachts and commercial vessels from getting in each other's way, Valencia carved a new half-mile canal out to the ocean.
The newly developed waterfront is open to the public (once you pass through security) and includes a hall of historic exhibitions with models of all 32 past Cup winners, South Beach-style restaurants, and a harborside promenade. Preliminary regattas have already been held, and the Louis Vuitton regattas in the spring will determine the Cup challenger .
Full story
Labels: Port America's Cup, Valencia
