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As construction continues on the six-building City of Culture of Galicia, the first completed building, the Galician National Archive, opened to employees this spring. The Archive is the southernmost building in the complex and, at 86,000 square feet, one of the smallest. Its undulating form – and that of all of the buildings – evolved from the layering of three sets of information on the hilltop site. First, the plan of the medieval center of Santiago de Compostela, a historic, religious pilgrimage city, was placed on the site. Second, a Cartesian grid representative of the modern city was laid over the medieval routes. Third, the topography of the hilltop was allowed to distort the flat geometries, thus producing a topological surface that posed old and new in a simultaneous matrix of figure and ground.
The six buildings in the matrix are conceived as three pairs. The Archive is paired with the Galician National Library to its north. The Archive and Library share a pedestrian street, or camino , and each features pedestrian arcades to protect visitors during the long Galician rainy season. The covered passage in the Archive cleaves the program into two parts, separating the grade-level exhibition gallery, which serves the entire complex, from the two-story archive itself, which houses public reading rooms, archiving and cataloguing areas, and closed stacks.
Eisenman Architects, City of Culture of Galicia competition model, 1999. National Archive building is in the foreground.
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Eisenman Architects, City of Culture of Galicia volumetric analysis model, 2001.
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Eisenman Architects, City of Culture of Galicia site plan, 2001. National Archive is the southernmost building.
Articulated soffits running the length of the interior demarcate major public areas from operational and service spaces. The exterior is clad in Spanish quartzite, a local stone, and a specially designed curtain wall that recalls traditional glazing patterns in Galicia. The Archive also features a double roof: an inner, waterproof membrane and an outer, stone-clad layer that channels heavy rain off the surface and hides roof mechanicals. The grids used in development of the site can also be seen in the pattern of the roof, and also supply a secondary gutter system.
The “tail” of the undulating Archive (an additional 57,000 square feet) houses the central chiller plant for the entire complex, which eliminated the need for individual building mechanical plants. The Archive and all of the buildings are linked below grade to a service tunnel, where the six-building complex’s heating plant is also located. The adjacent Library will be completed this fall, and the Heritage Research Center and History Museum in 2010. The International Art Center and Performing Arts Center will complete the complex.
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City of Culture of Galicia seen from southeast, 2009. L to R: Galician National Archive, National Library, History Museum (in background), Heritage Research Center. Photo courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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City of Culture of Galicia seen from the southeast, 2009. Photo: Paisajes Españoles. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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Galician National Archive south elevation, seen from the east. Photo: Manuel Gonzales Vicente. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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South facade of National Archive, with John Hejduk towers beyond. Photo: Manuel Gonzales Vicente. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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West facade of Galician National Archive and two entries. Photo: Manuel Gonzales Vicente. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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Eisenman Architects, bird’s-eye plan view of National Archive from east entry, 2002.
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Eisenman Architects, perspective view of Galician National Archive from east entry, 2002
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Eisenman Architects, Galician National Archive reflected ceiling plan, 2002.
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Eisenman Architects, longitudinal section of National Archive, 2002.
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Eisenman Architects, Section Model, 2004.
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Eisenman Architects, Section Model, 2004.
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National Archive exhibition gallery, with glass floor. Photo: Manuel Gonzales Vicente. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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Galician National Archive exhibition gallery entry detail. Photo: Manuel Gonzales Vicente. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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Galician National Archive main entry level. Photo: Manuel Gonzales Vicente. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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Galician National Archive entry level looking down to reading room. Photo: Manuel Gonzales Vicente. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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National Archive lower level. Photo: Manuel Gonzales Vicente. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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National Archive lower level view of soffit and entry above. Photo: Manuel Gonzales Vicente. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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National Archive and Galician National Library seen from the southwest. Photo: Paisajes Españoles. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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Galician National Archive and National Library seen from northeast. Photo: Paisajes Españoles. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
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Galician National Archive and National Library seen from northwest. Photo: Paisajes Españoles. Courtesy Fundación Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
Project Facts:
Size: one million sq ft
Start: 2000
Projected completion timeline:
National Archive: December 2008
Heritage Research Center: December 2009
Biblioteca: December 2009
History Museum: March 2010
International Art Center: December 2012
Performing Arts Theatre: 2013
Total area: 173 acres
Major components of the CCG are
The Museum of Galician History (172,000 square feet)
International Art Center (135,000 square feet)
Performing Arts Theater (220,000 square feet)
Galician Library (122,000 square feet)
National Archive (86,000 square feet)
Heritage Research Center (50,000 square feet)
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.
Credits:
Architects
Eisenman Architects
Senior Partner & Principal Designer: Peter Eisenman
Partner-in-Charge: Richard Rosson
Project Director: Sandra Hemingway
Design Team – Competition: Elena Fernandez, Sebastian Mittendorfer, Selim Vural
Design Team – Schematic Design: Hernan Diaz Alonso, Matteo Cainer, Andri Gerber, Chien Ho Hsu, Bradley Khouri, Jorg Kiesow, Ceu Martinez, Paul Preissner, Jeremy Ricketts, Andy Saunders, Onur Teke, Chia Fang Wu
Design Team – Design Development: Jennifer Mujat-Kearns, Ashraf Sami Abdala, Jeremy Carvalho, Stephanie Choi, Christiane Fashek, Erkan Emre, Eric Goldemberg, Zheng Ji, Orit Kaufman, Lucia Martinez, Matias Musacchio, Mikako Oshima, Rafael Ivan Pazos, Anna Pla, Maria Sieira, Theo Spyropoulos, Yakob Sutanto, Federica Vannucchi, Raquel Vasallo, Khalid Watson
Execution Architects & Engineers of Record: UTE Andres Perea Ortega & Euroestudios, Madrid
Peter Eisenman, FAIA, Int FRIBA
Peter Eisenman, an internationally recognized architect and educator, is founder and design principal of Eisenman Architects in New York City. The firm’s current projects include the one-million-square-foot cultural complex, the City of Culture of Galicia; a railroad station in Pompei, a masterplan for the waterfront of Pozzuoli, Italy, and a media center for the University of Valencia in Gandia, Spain.
Among Eisenman Architects’ award-winning projects are the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts and Fine Arts Library at The Ohio State University in Columbus, and the Koizumi Sangyo Corporation headquarters building in Tokyo, which received National Honor Awards for Design from the American Institute of Architects. The firm’s Aronoff Center for Design and Art, the University of Phoenix Stadium for the NFL Arizona Cardinals, and City of Culture of Galicia have each been the subject of hour-long television documentaries. The firm’s work is also the subject of a number of books, including the recent monograph, Tracing Eisenman (Rizzoli, 2006).
Eisenman Architects’ unique approach to design projects is to consider the layers of physical and cultural archaeologies at each site, not just the obvious contexts and programs of a building. Rather than pursuing a particular building type, Eisenman Architects specializes in projects with exceptionally difficult siting, programmatic and/or budgetary constraints, and of strategic importance to their environment. Many of the more than 130 projects the firm has designed are the response to invited international design competitions, including innovative proposals for the Musée du Quai Branly competition in Paris and Musée des Confluences competition in Lyon. The memorial in Berlin and City of Culture were also competition entries.
In 2001 Mr. Eisenman received the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Smithsonian Institution’s 2001 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture. He was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the International Architectural Biennale in Venice in 2004. Mr. Eisenman is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Popular Science magazine named Mr. Eisenman one of the top five innovators of 2006 for the Arizona Cardinals stadium. In 2007, Yale University Press published Mr. Eisenman’s Written Into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990-2004, and in 2008 Rizzoli published his book Ten Canonical Buildings, 1950-2000, which examines the work of ten architects since 1950. Mr. Eisenman is also a dedicated educator, and has taught at many universities, including Cambridge, Princeton, Harvard, and Ohio State. He was the first Irwin S. Chanin Distinguished Professor of Architecture at The Cooper Union, in New York City, and is currently the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale.
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20 Comments
So great to see this finally nearing completion, there are some fascinating moments here.
A lot of people in Galicia says that the scale and the cost of the project is too hight. Now, the project has adapted and changed by removing some of the initial uses and probably open about 2014.
If you want to watch a recent video of the project visit http://stgo.es/2009/05/ciudad-de-la-cultura-de-galicia-peter-eisenman/
Good post!
Wonderful,
It is very white, on the interior. But the form-follows landscape, or the critical wave as opposed to the fold, is very delightful. It seems to so easily figure the surrounding landform(s)...
they had this building in Extreme Engineering on Discovery, completely insane how the overlayed grid comes back in everything floor-ceiling-roof, even when it's only perceived from google-earth. a very complete and consistent building, how Eisenman got this built I have no idea.
randomized, cause it is Spain?
Beautiful surfaces and spaces.
Interesting that from the images the project resembles something that might have come out of Miralles office - eventhough the two have diametrically opposed approaches to making forms.
Wow, this is some of the best comment-action I've seen that wasn't a race-to-the-bottom slag-off. I know, I know - thankfully, there's still time for that.
Thanks Archinect for a great feature: you inspired me to dash off my thoughts over at my blog, The Zero Of Form...
http://thezeroofform.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/competing-effects-and-city-states/
Duane
...in seancing adorno? me, me! [in channeling eisenman via adorno? done it]
love that this is finally taking shape and living up to its potential. kudos to eisenman, and i agree: give him the damn award! let's hear him speak!
that first aerial progress photo reminds me of a giant hummer that seems to have ran over a student's model in the mud, thus leaving it's tire tracks for all to admire.
other than that, it's quite a feat. hope to visit someday.
this place has the aesthetic of an open pit mine.
not a fan.
<img src="http://blog.lib.umn.edu/kani0023/civengineering/open_pit_mine.jpg">
<img src=http://blog.lib.umn.edu/kani0023/civengineering/open_pit_mine.jpg>
hm. the aerial shot of construction sort of feels like that, xcarlx, but the completed sections of the project: not so much. in fact, they're actually more slick and prettified than i would have anticipated, considering the landscape metaphor the project seems to be about.
are you just responding to the construction pic? because, if so, you need to see more construction sites. they're pretty messy. from the presentation materials, i'd expect that when the rest of the construction fills in it will have very little resemblance to your linked pix.
re: the merits of the project. i like it fine. it's the holocaust memorial on the top, columbus convention center on the sides, and daap inside. has something new been brought to the project besides the conflation of these previous efforts?
the wood model is beautiful, makes you excited that the project could really be a sensuous moving thing but, as at wexner, the completed sections of construction feel like the inside of a really fancy shopping mall. (maybe that just says more about the $$/sf that get spent on shopping malls these days...)
The "layering" concept that overwhelms all design decisions has nothing to do with making a place where people feel comfortable and want to be.
Most Eisenman buldings are very unpleasant to visit. That is inappropriate for a public cultural complex built by the state. Why should visitors care about the unhappy state of Eisenman's psyche?
And because they are so conceptual, with concepts that have little to do with building, most Eisenman buildings also fall apart and leak. See Wexner.
I agree strongly with much of what Steven Ward [above] has said. I was lucky enough to be invited on a walking tour of the complex 14 months ago, and it was a disappointing experience.
Like many others, I've been aware of this project since its inception, and still feel that two of the competition presentations – namely the moulded wood model and the pilgrim shell tracery – are Eisenman's most seductive works since his early house projects of the 1960s.
However, the scheme as built [or at least in the process of building] has veered quite markedly from the competition scheme; obviously that's not unusual, but it is disappointing that the construction throws up so few delights. Normally the unsheathed structural components of such large projects are impressive in their size, but unfortunately a huge effort has been made to disguise everything in plasterboard: it's mind-blowing how much of the Eisenmanism of this project [specifically the sculpted overheads which negotiate a route through the offset axes] is literally cardboard.
Given the rugged nature of the terrain around – and the effects of the damp climate can be seen on Siza's Contemporary Art gallery in the city itself – the extensive glazing is going to look even worse in a few years than it currently does. It looks like the type of glazing [blue tinged glass, cream-coloured plastic frames] used in office buildings on industrial estates. It's really that poor.
For those of you who would imagine that the sculpted nature of the site works might lend themselves to overgrowth by the surrounding lush Galician hilltop – as I had imagined from the concept model, and as seen to an extent in Renzo Piano's Klee Museum in Berlin – it's worth noting that the hill-like roof structures are entirely clad in imported stone.
Unfortunately, the more encroachment that the landscape makes on the site [which would be a positive in my viewpoint, and would seem to adhere to ethos of the initial competition scheme], the more the glazed elements will look drastically out of place and the worse they will age.
It's a vast, vast project and, as such, has suffered from many external compromises. The germ of the project presented in the competition entry is still seductive, but it's not really fair to blame all the deficiencies in the project on external reasons when so many of them seem to have been part of the architect's ideology from the start.
the interior shots look like bad office interior by callison...
how will this get petey e. the pritzker? i just don't see it happening.
Orhan I like this phrasing, critical sq. footage for it.
Ok, I'm new to this. I see a confluence of Libeskind and Zaha's work.... not entirely original...but can some one explain why this building is so great? Destroying a natural contour to create an artificial contour...Is this the concept?...synthetic land art as architecture? If so, it would be great if Eisenman worked with Turrell on developing a synthetic Roden crater.
Is that the concept? to destroy a typography and build a building that pays homage to the former typography that the building has replaced by mimicking the former topography? The best venture i can think of is PE is attempting to create a synthesis between landscape, place and architecture.
At it's current stage when i see the small houses in the background, I feel embarrassed for the local inhabitants, who it seems have a wavy factory or mall in their backyard. I know the project has much to go before being complete so I hope it turns out better than it looks now...it is supposed to have vegetation on the roofs right?
I want to temper my initial criticism by adding that I feel P.E.'s Holocaust Memorial is genius, and it works conceptually on many levels. It culminates the work of Serra, and many of the land artists into a work that is thoughtful and provocative without being sentimental or theatrical. It clearly represents an axiomatic sense of loss and betrayal.
You are indeed new to this, Nico.
Eisenmann has 13 years on Danny, and 18 on Ms. Hadid. And you feel his work is a confluence of theirs? Fine, I'll grant you one example. The Holocaust Memorial ... "rather similar" to the Garden of Exile by Mr. Libeskind. And also in Berlin, I might add. But that's the one you refer to as "genius."
There is indeed a lot of room for -informed- critique of his work: historically, and specific to this project. He's a polarizing character.
But if all you want to see is a "wavy mall" by a guy whose efforts would be better spent making a fake crater, I think you might be "barking up the wrong tree" by looking at buildings at all.
Arkhive you are obviously new to identifying "irony' and so much more...
All three architects, Libeskind, Eisenman, and Hadid are deeply informed by Soviet Constructivism.
While Eisenman may in fact have been in the field longer, his nascent work displays little if any of the formal qualities inherent in Libeskind or Hadid's mature work. It is Eisenman who has come around to adopt his younger cohorts formal strategies in Galecia. I hope you carefully examine their bodies of work before commenting.
Really? Really, Nico? A self-described layperson who's "new to the work" of Charles Gwathmey upon his death is going to get pedantic?
I am just walking away from this one.
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