Serious buildings with a sense of fun

Valencia's Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciencies (the City of Arts and Sciences) is a triumph of modern architecture, writes Emma Cullinan

A seal paddles along on its back sticking its deep pink tongue out and blowing raspberries, then it gathers a mouthful of water and gargles loudly. He is a captive performer, literally: he lives at L'Oceanographic in the Spanish city of Valencia and has learnt how to play to a crowd. He creates a bond between human and beast and gives his audience the giggles.

It's that connection that we have with nature which architect Santiago Calatrava has so successfully used in his four buildings next to the l'Oceanographic; whose shapes speak of dinosaurs, bugs, wings and eyes. Together they form the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciencies (the City of Arts and Sciences) which will be completed on October 8th with the opening of a concert hall, known as Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, which contains four performance spaces, including Valencia's first dedicated opera house.

The arts and science city was conceived by the Valencian government which is hoping it will put their city on the international map - that Bilbao effect (the site of Frank Gehry's museum and where Calatrava designed a footbridge). Indeed, many city authorities are beginning to realise just what a powerful attraction architecture can be.

In the case of Valencia, they didn't even have to import an internationally renowned architect, they had one right in their neighbourhood. Calatrava - who now has offices and projects all over the place - was born in the Valencian town of Benimamet, in 1951.

It can't all be put down to architecture, people from all sorts of disciplines should be attracted by this cultural quarter, including business people who avail of the exhibition and meeting spaces in every building and, hopefully, musicians attracted by the high-tech facilities in the new concert hall.

This will be the joint second largest opera house in the world, and it comes complete with a players pit that can change height and size - for orchestral manoeuvres in the dark. The stage can also be moved about and sliding screens and planes allow for the storage of two complete operatic sets at the same time. The hopes for an international audience are writ large in the libretto screens which carry translations of operas in several languages.

Three of Calatrava's buildings in the city of arts and sciences (CAC) have multi-references to nature, and the concert hall, which has been likened to a hard-backed Mediterranean insect and a Roman helmet, also contains ship symbolism, not least in the portholes along its sides.

Since these buildings are near the harbour and the fact that this complex sits in a former river (which was diverted around the city after flooding in 1957), it's no wonder that in parts the concert hall looks like a ship sailing down a former tributary and out to sea (past the Oceanographic which pumps water in from the sea).

Calatrava's fourth building here is the Umbracle, a botanical garden beneath a delicate filigree arch that sits above a car-park, paying back the C02 emissions almost as soon as you leave your car.

So, rather than looking like nature, it contains nature in the form of palm trees, lavender, honeysuckle and the like, some of which are beginning to climb over this elaborate pergola.

Perhaps it's our connection with nature that makes the heart beat a little bit faster when you emerge from a rather grotty part of Valencia, in my case a street full of car repair workshops, and the rigid forms of the city's apartment blocks, to this 350,000sq m (3,767,365sq ft) open space containing curved white and glass buildings, none of which can be completely captured in one glance. They all demand study due to their complex, but beautifully formed, exteriors.

While they don't exactly lie on their backs and gargle seawater, one of the buildings does wink at you, through a glass wall that opens up with the help of pistons visible on the inside of the façade. The Hemisphere was the first building in this city of arts and science, completed in 1998. The architect conceived it as an eye of wisdom. And here's the linking symbolism: the centre has a planetarium, Imax and laser show and the idea is that you see the world through these "eye-opening" shows. The reflecting properties of the surrounding shallow water are used to great effect to create a complete eye, with the "pupil" in the middle, a huge globe covered in trencadis (translated as broken tiles).

There is a lot of tile work in these buildings: lining the pools, creating benches and covering vents (making beauty out of necessity). A reference to Antonio Gaudi perhaps, that other famous Spanish architect?

My guide, Patricia Picó of CAC, tells me it's just that Valencia is a ceramics city and Calatrava was keen to use local materials. As well as working with native fabric, he also designed with the climate in mind.

The white concrete was used to make the most of the Valencian light, along with the pale blue pool lining. The south side of the second building Calatrava built here has the feel of a classic swimming pool at ground level with its great arms of concrete dipping into the water and a colonnade of concrete legs running along the base, like a seaside promenade.

This science museum (Museo de las Ciencias Principe Felipe), completed in 2002, has been likened to all sorts of natural things, such as a skeleton, dinosaur and petrified forest - strangely, as they are linked to natural, but dead things, this building does seem heavier than the others. It's all that overlapping concrete that doesn't always cluster into gratifying shapes as you move around, unlike the Umbracal whose intricate form presents you with different, all beautiful, patterns as you change direction. The pointed elements lined along the roof of the science museum are like baby birds asking for food, says Calatrava, so the building is seeking life.

On the other side the science museum definitely springs into life in the high flowing glass walls inspired by waterfalls, which are held up by branching columns that symbolise trees. This is such a bright space for a science museum, where visitors are told that it is forbidden not to touch and it is hoped that they come out with more questions than they went in with. It's a contrast to Belfast's W5 (who, what, where, when, why) which is in almost complete darkness (and which I highly recommend for a fun, stimulating day out for both adults and children).

L'Oceanographic, at the sea end of this arts and science city, is slightly different from the other buildings. Its undulating roofs were created by Spanish architect Felix Candela, who was dubbed the "shell builder" following his research into tensile shell structures (stemming from his belief that strength should derive from form rather than mass). He died in 1997, before the job was finished, and it was completed by a competent project management company. With its timber walkways and railings it has the feeling of a theme park.

Calatrava's final building in CAC, opening this Saturday, sits next to L'Hemisferic and looks very much like a larger relative: one beetle-like insect following the other. The shapes of both buildings are described as lenticular: or like an eye lens. These arching forms are very much a Calatrava trademark, you only have to go and look at his bridge in Dublin to see that. The man who trained as an architect, and then added in an engineering qualification for good measure, won a competition to design a bridge for the Olympics in Barcelona, in 1984, and has seen his career lunge forward since then.

Valencia's cultural city of animal-like forms has attracted international visitors, but it's also appealed to locals who can stroll here, and in the revamped park next door, at weekends.

"Two women on the bus back into the city centre chatter away excitedly as they point at these sculptural buildings, with the new 75-metre high one clad not only in white concrete, flanked by (ladybird like) steel "shells" covered in trencadis and topped by a metal plume which rockets from the reinforced concrete pillar, supported only at one end and in the middle: they are also covered in builders working towards the imminent opening.

These are serious buildings that are having fun and, as with animals, they speak to us on a subliminal, and sometimes, sublime level.