If you love architecture, and value art, or vice versa, you cannot miss visiting this new space in the Spanish city, where both concepts merge.
Have you ever wondered what you can, or cannot, give up? What elements of your life can you let go of without suffering a major breakdown? This is an exercise that, without being a mental health professional, I do not recommend. Au contrarie, I think the important thing is to do the opposite exercise: What is it that you can’t give up?
Well, if you are a lover of architecture and value art or vice versa, this June a center that you will not be able to give up visiting has opened its doors: the CaixaForum in Valencia. It is the ninth center in Spain and the only one within a work of the unique Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava. If this doesn’t inspire you to go, wait until you finish reading this article and maybe change your mind.
The new CaixaForum is in Valencia
The City of Arts and Sciences, and more specifically its Ágora building, is a building with an elliptical plan, whose axes measure 100 and 65 meters, and whose surprising height reaches 80 meters. This covered plaza houses almost 5,000 square meters of open space inside, and its envelope is made with a metal structure, with a resounding design, with a part covered in blue trencadís and large metal slats with glass areas.
The building in itself is a “cool thing”, but the CaixaForum had to have its own identity, so the developer called an architectural competition. It was the team led by architect Enric Ruiz-Geli, a professional with extensive experience and head of the Cloud 9 entity, who won the competition with a motto: «The ‘living cells’.» According to the author, his intervention gives life to the building, to the great whale.
A building dedicated to culture
The living cells distributes its interior space into two exhibition halls, an auditorium for 300 people, a bookstore and a restaurant. All executed for the modest amount of 19 million euros contributed by the la Caixa Foundation. As for the surface, some media speak of 10,000 square meters of the building, but this does not reach 5,000.
CaixaForum Valencia opened its doors with the exhibition ‘Pharaoh. King of Egypt’, organized in collaboration with the British Museum. Over time this place will become essential for culture lovers, especially because of the entity’s philosophy, how it has developed in its counterparts in the rest of the national territory and, even more, for having the collaboration of different artists contemporaries in their creation.
The Ágora building is the most special
The Agora is located between the Assut de l’Or bridge and the Oceanogràfic, and the promoters claim that this place enhances the meaning of the term agora: public square, place of meeting or discussion. In particular, the meaning seems somewhat forced to me, but the intention is what counts, and the results will not leave anyone unfazed.
The works began in 2018 and it has taken five years to finish this magnificent work. The result is a useful area of 6,500 square meters, with enormous exhibition rooms on the ground floor, multipurpose classrooms, the auditorium and several family and educational spaces perfect for social interaction.
The incredible sculptures of the CaixaForum in Valencia
Two contemporary sculptures are part of the space. The Arc al Cel by Inma Femenía, an optical effect that shapes the natural light inside the building, generating a rainbow. And the Palafit, a sculpture in the outdoor pond by the artist Anna Talens, which refers to agrarian architecture, a unique representation of a triangular and golden construction, which has a brutal contrast with the Agora building.
Obviously, the living cells refer directly to the spaces generated by Geli and arranged inside the building. Capsules of different dimensions that configure the essence of the space and explain what you will find inside. The Cloud, for example, is built with lightweight materials, with a fiberglass floor or semi-transparent polymers. Inside, an open space is prepared to be multifunctional.
It has a restaurant, auditoriums and exhibition areas
In addition, the Cloud changes color depending on the temperature, and its tones vary according to the weather with real data from the five oceans. The auditorium is located at one end of the building that has an obvious contrast in lighting, generating a darker space surrounded by a cardboard landscape, and a work by Frederic Amat on the ceiling, The Written Forest.
However, the restaurant turns out to be the most impressive closed space. It is a vaulted roof covered with vegetation, with very unique skylights that are oriented to the four cardinal points, providing the interior with light from wherever the star appears, compatible with the cork envelope. The administration and the bookstore are located in another unique building, protected by a very spectacular ceramic roof, on a wooden structure.
CaixaForum Valencia opens its doors in a City within another City. A huge space with lots of light and provided with a multitude of activities for children, teenagers, young people and adults of all conditions. Furthermore, it does so with architecture and art on all four sides. The truth is that those of us from other latitudes are somewhat envious.
*Photographs courtesy of Miguel Lorenzo