The City of Culture of Galicia, a technologically advanced complex of six buildings is planned as a dynamic resource for today's Galicia and a new destination for visitors from around the world. Officials of Galicia and invited guests laid the cornerstone for this 810,000-square-foot, $125 million project on February 15, 2001. By the time construction is completed in summer 2004, the landscaped, 173-acre site on Monte Gaiás will have been transformed into a 'magic mountain' through the work of New York City-based Eisenman Architects.

The project began with an architectural competition, which the Department of Culture, Social Communications and Tourism of the Xunta de Galicia initiated in February 1999. A short list of eleven distinguished finalists submitted proposals: Ricardo Bofill, Peter Eisenman, José Manuel Gallego, Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Liebeskind, Juan Navarro, Jean Nouvel, Dominique Perrault, and César Portela. In August 1999, the competition jury selected Eisenman Architects to design the CCG, with Peter Eisenman as Principal-in-Charge.

Commenting on the competition, Eisenman states, "We were given a complex and fascinating program, whose goals far exceeded any summary of spaces and functions. The first demand was for an open and dynamic design, which would be permeable to all sorts of possibilities that as yet could not even be envisioned. We believed we could take this demand at face value, as a statement of the project's first priority."

"Instead of the ground's being conceived as a backdrop against which the buildings stand out as figures, we generate a condition in which the ground can rear up to become figure, the buildings can subside into ground. It is a new kind of urban fabric," Eisenman says, "in which the space you inhabit can seem both smooth and furrowed -- much as a seashell, the age-old symbol of Santiago, is smooth and furrowed. The coding of Santiago's medieval past into the CCG creates the sense of an active present, as found in a tactile, pulsing new form -- what you might call a fluid shell."

The buildings of the City of Culture spread out over the terrain like a moldable mass of clay linked together by five long tree-lined thoroughfares. Alluding to five streets of Santiago's old quarter, as well as to their traditional extensions with rueiros, and in fact the final shape of the complex springs from the plan of the historic core, which is superposed by the characteristic striated surface of the venera, the scallop shell that is the symbol of the pilgrim's road to Santiago. Raising its shaken silhouette to the cathedral towers, over the highway that holds together Galicia's Atlantic facade, the new City of Culture presents itself as a magic mountain for pilgrims of knowledge.

Major components of the CCG are The 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) and Periodicals Archive (86,000 square feet) , Central Services and Administration building (50,000 square feet), and 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. While demonstrating the importance of biodiversity and habitat preservation, the Arboretum may also serve a ceremonial function, as a place where distinguished Galicians and honored visitors may be invited to plant local species, as their way of leaving a mark on the CCG.

care of Archpedia (http://www.archpedia.com/Projects-Peter-Eisenman_01.html)

Site Model - 1

Site Model - 2

Site Model - 3

Site Model - 4

Cross Section Rendering

Interior Shot

Seems as though it is finally under construction - I wonder if there are anymore images out there :wondering

Found this nice shot care of Columbia.edu (http://www.arch.columbia.edu/gsap/32552?PHPSESSID=ff8084cb15aec6eb506eda8d5145d8cb)

Hey JP, this is the site of the project, with 3d images and follow ups of the works.
There are loads of follow-up pictures of the construction, very interesting.
I cannot paste them here because they are in flash, but check them out.

The intro is in "Gallego", but then you can choose various languages including english of course.


http://www.cidadedacultura.es (http://www.cidadedacultura.es/)


Its a great project, as all your posts are!

Thank you for that link. It is a great addition to the post. I was looking for exactly what you posted :not worth

you ask, I comply master...:not worth

Actually , I am "Gallego" by my Mothers part, so I made a search in this local language, a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish.
They are so nationalist they reject using Spanish, but for the web this makes their site difficult to find...!

Here you can see the latest pictures of the construction (http://www.cidadedacultura.org/obra_aberta/subgaleria.php?idn=Galeria_Obras_07_2006/&lg=cas)
It has become HI RES in GE too..!

here the GE snapshot...

photos taken during my recent trip at Santiago de Compostela

all i can say is that this thing is HUGE, it dominates the Santiago de Compostela skyline to that direction.

:eek:

A few official small size pics you have on the masters "http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/"

a couple of more images for an incredibly interesting project

and

looks like John Hejduk's spirit lives on!

"The Peter" described this project continuously during the theory course I took as a grad student at YSOA. One of the more disturbing items? He announced to the class that his client (I'm assuming he means the official who actually controlled the project) was essentially an unreformed relic of Franco's fascist government, but "he's paying the bills" and had the power to get this built. Then he compared himself to Speers, Hitler's architect. No one dared challenge him on this (he had already threatened several students), but after the meeting, the students of Jewish and Spanish origins were understandably furious. However we all went back next class, because (in an academic sense) the Peter "was paying the bills." (Actually, several meetings later I walked out the class and never went back, garnering myself the only "F" I have ever received in my life...but to my shame it was not for this reason.)

It's probably worth noting that one of the Peter's historical foils, Le Corbusier, actively sought patronage from the Vichy government of France...it has been suggested (although I can't remember where) that after the war there were good grounds to prosecute Corb as a collaborator with the fascist regime, and that only the general admiration for his talent in post-War government circles kept him from being charged.

I'm sorry to add such a dark note to the discussion of this project. I'm clearly still bothered by it all...I'd be interested in others' opinions on this. And I know some of my classmates from the course are probably forum members...perhaps they have different takes on the Peter's diatribe.

On a lighter note, it may interest you all to know that the base CAD software for this project was Rhino 3D...I saw a presentation on this by associates from the Peter's office at an AIA Technology meeting in NYC. They also claimed to have developed a completely different form for construction documents. As opposed to issuing plans, sections, elevations, and the rest of the standard ortho set, the documents they showed us looked more like incredibly elaborated versions of those "exploded drawings" used in industrial design to demonstrate how a tool is put together.

i think this is a vid that partly shows the city http://youtube.com/watch?v=M2DvHW90nF4

section model

an aerial view

his process, I think he said that he took native paths of nomads, which looked like a shell and overlayed a cartesian grid, if im not mistaken, or took a shell pattern and layered the nomad grid and the cartesian grid

He announced to the class that his client (I'm assuming he means the official who actually controlled the project) was essentially an unreformed relic of Franco's fascist government, but "he's paying the bills" and had the power to get this built. Then he compared himself to Speers, Hitler's architect. ...
It's probably worth noting that one of the Peter's historical foils, Le Corbusier, actively sought patronage from the Vichy government of France...it has been suggested (although I can't remember where) that after the war there were good grounds to prosecute Corb as a collaborator with the fascist regime, and that only the general admiration for his talent in post-War government circles kept him from being charged.


Thank you very much for this insight. If architectural books were based on discussions of real issues like this one, instead of pretty pictures and esoteric blabbering, I would be buying more of them.

I know this region of Spain is very conservative, with right wing officials wining the local elections, so many of the architects that design in several regions of Spain work for right wing - but democraticaly elected- governments.
What worries me is why he chooses to compare himself with Speer, does he feel he is realizing some megalomanic dream of this government official?
or was it just a "bad joke" or something?

an interesting interview of his very particular views on Architecture and politics in this interview;

Peter Eisenman : "Liberal Views Have Never Built Anything of any Value." (http://www.archinect.com/features/article.php?id=4618_0_23_0_M)

speaking of never building anything of value...(i'm obviuosly not a fan)

speaking of never building anything of value...(i'm obviuosly not a fan)

I'm a fan that he tried (but failed) to reinvent something. His early work (going back to his dissertation) is noble. However, the thinking led him down a road that he had to follow. Otherwise, he would have to consider that most of his life was wasted...Sometimes we may be the victim of our own devices? Or perhaps it is more likely that our ego gets in the way.

I'm not a fan of most of his work, but there is part of the process that intrigues me...

an interesting interview of his very particular views on Architecture and politics in this interview;

Peter Eisenman : "Liberal Views Have Never Built Anything of any Value." (http://www.archinect.com/features/article.php?id=4618_0_23_0_M)

You know, I missed that article. It makes much more sense than what he said in the class, which was rambling and random. Actually, the class was rambling and random in general. He started the first meeting by introducing himself as "the Voice of Darkness."

I actually am quite a fan of "the Peter's" work. Despite the nasty personal interaction.

Interestingly enough, classicist Demetri Porphyrios (mentioned in that article) was my advanced studio critic (read: tutor, for those of you in programs with different terminology). My final project for Demetri was a process-driven re-examination of the old Greek city-state typology. Demetri seemed to like the fact that I used Eisenman-like operations to lay the damn thing out...he went out of his way during the final jury to point that out and silence another juror who started to go on about the seeming randomness of certain elements: "It's pure Eisenman!" He was equally supportive of the other "rebel" member of his studio, whose project was even more closely derived from Eisenman's grid obsessions than my foolishness.

Of course, Peter had previously threatened to make sure I never got a job in architecture anywhere on the planet if I ever compared myself to him, so I didn't follow through on any of this during the discussion of my project.

Something else interesting about that article, if only to me:

I'm writing a piece now for an Italian exhibition on metaphysics. On de Chirico, Corac, all of these so-called crazy guys, the Italian crazies.

There had been some talk of having me go back to YSOA, after I graduated, to talk about a paper I wrote on De Chirico, Pittura Metafisica, and Italian architecture. I suddenly understand now why that never happened...the mystery had been bothering me.

I just re-read the Archinect article about Peter's political thoughts. I spoke about this in a PM with Marcelo, but I think it might be helpful to make the observation public:

In the interview, Peter says

You see, my work basically says that while I may have my own personal political leanings, or I may have affinities to conservative politics, when it comes to architecture, ultimately its politics is autonomy. That's why I can look, as Leon Krier does at Albert Speer, even though he was what he was - and I'm best friends with his son - I have no problem with that. I don't have to be an ideologue; I'm not a flag-waver. I believe that the architecture that the fascist regime was doing was a very important moment in time.

I think that is what the guy was trying to say in that class in 2002 (two years before this interview). I could have sworn Peter was then essentially gloating about making it to the big time with this project because he was eager and willing to play Faust to some fascist Mephistopheles.

Instead, if I read that interview correctly, he was trying to say this: architecture is autonomous, no matter what the political or cultural stance the architect takes himself.

That's Peter then. However, one of my other instructors, Vincent Scully (yeah, I went to a starchitect sort of school) once insisted in his architectural history course that the class of intellectuals in Weimar Germany that included Mies and Gropius could be held partly responsible for what came next, because they concentrated all their impressive capabilities solely on their fields (autonomous fields, in Peter's terms) without taking on the greater issues that would eventually overwhelm their world.

Whatever about Eisenman's political-artistic delirious, i think that he is still standing with your experimental ideologism, meanwhile his former partners (Meier, Graves and Gwathmey (right?) are lightly out of architectural contingence because their lack of reinvention or capability of new design codes researching inspired of nature, as PE's DNA design (Hejduk was the only with the same vanguardist mind, and was misunderstood-is quite enough to the mention of his Wall House-). I don't want to be estigmatized, i'm not a fan of all Peter's work, but we still needing a innovative, restless minds like his own.
I hope (seriously, in my particular opinion, at the side of the themeway), at least a project like the shown here, in places as Dubai, because i think that in this place are concibed some big modern architecture horrors, totally out of context, visually disturbers, and a bad taste of design (for example...Rem Koolhaas' death star project, yuck!). with a Eisenman's project like, as a other sand dune in the arabian landscape, it back the vernacular design codes to places like this.
Keepin going Peter!

link (http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=65427_0_24_0_C)

An Invitation from Eisenman Architects
...to stay home Wednesday evening, October 3, 2007, and tune in to the DISCOVERY CHANNEL for "Build it Bigger." At 8 pm ET/PT, in an episode titled "Mountain of Steel," host Danny Forster will take you through the current construction of our torqued and curving designs for the six-building City of Culture of Galicia, sited on a hilltop overlooking Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Get the first glimpses of this complex of libraries, theaters, and museums scheduled to open in northwestern Spain in 2010.

:wondering

For those not in the US, you can download episodes of Extreme Engineering from Itunes.

Of course, Peter had previously threatened to make sure I never got a job in architecture anywhere on the planet if I ever compared myself to him, so I didn't follow through on any of this during the discussion of my project.


LOL... I missed this before... good thing I never had Peter E. I am just too much a rebel without a cause and would have challenged him till the end... But then again I would never compare myself to him LOL I even wrote a paper on him in school called "Peter Eisenman - Horrified" :) But I have always appreciated his ideas and even used some of them completing my diploma project design.

I'm a fan that he tried (but failed) to reinvent something. His early work (going back to his dissertation) is noble. However, the thinking led him down a road that he had to follow. Otherwise, he would have to consider that most of his life was wasted...Sometimes we may be the victim of our own devices? Or perhaps it is more likely that our ego gets in the way.

I'm not a fan of most of his work, but there is part of the process that intrigues me...

Thats just it Tim... he traps himself with his own theoretical constructs and then, more than not, this leads to buildings that fall short of what they could have been because he traps himself. He did the same thing, but politically, with the Emory performing arts center in Atlanta (http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums//showpost.php?p=26775&postcount=19). Now what was built in its place is some run-of-the-mill quazi-classicist crap.

speaking of eisenman, there a program on the Science channel called "How did they do it" and the last episode I saw was Eisenmans Cardinals stadium. They showed the roof and field in action. Ill try to find a you tube clip. ill post it in the cardinals stadium thread.