Design

One of Spain's Biggest Architectural Boondoggles Just Keeps Getting Worse

Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences was built to lure visitors. Instead, it's caused nothing but problems.
Wikimedia Commons

Spectacular and reviled in equal measure, Valencia, Spain's City of Arts and Sciences has proved to be the proverbial gift that keeps on taking. Despite a budget that quadrupled to over €1 billion, the huge museum and arts complex, completed in 2005, just never attracted the predicted stampede of visitors. Designed by Valencia-born Santiago Calatrava, the complex itself is filled with bone-like constructions that recall a gargantuan dinosaurs' graveyard. The cemetery comparison isn't actually that far off—as I've commented before, this was one of the sites where the Spanish boom years' trend for grand urban projects came to die.

The project's star fell even further after the 2008 financial crisis saw Valencia’s economy crumple, a slump in which mega-projects like the City played a not-insignificant role. Housed in a cash-strapped city whose region required a €4.5 billion bailout from central government two years ago, you might think that things could hardly get worse for the complex. It seems, however, that they have. Just over seven years after completion, parts of the complex are already falling apart.