So do all those visitors to the Cuidad come for the architecture, or the IMAX, the dolphins, the interactive science museum? Judging from our visit to the Oceanographic (see separate rant), they come because the theme park attractions are what they want. The buildings they sit in are largely irrelevant.
The entire 'urban complex', as the journals and the brochures call it, is profoundly unsatisfying. Each individual building is stunning. We found the (not quite finished) Palace of the Arts the most amazing, even more so than the widely pictured Science Museum. The Arts building, shown here, is enormously varied from different angles. Pip thinks that it looks like a bug. Sarah says that from some angles it looks like an Ancient Greek war helmet, from others like a space ship. Also very beautiful will be the arboured walk way, a long series of graceful arches over gardens (not all of which are open to the public). This parallels the Science Museum and gives splendid views across the city.
But the whole park does not cohere. The buildings do not inter-relate or share much similarity of form beyond elements of spikiness and all being glistening white. An interesting comparison is the science park in Lisbon. This has a big range of offices, institutes and businesses besides lot of monumental sculptures and the fantastic Oceanarium. Its biggest drawback is a lot of unshaded white space, which is hard to handle on hot days. But the park has an internal rhythm and unity which makes it a pleasure to wander in, with sight and desire lines that create easy strolls even around sharp right angles and along rigid avenues. This unity does not exist in the Cuidad. Instead it is as if a whole bunch of very interesting twenty-first century buildings happened up against each other in a random way which does not (or has not yet) developed any sense of organic connection.
Perhaps Calatrava saw Bugs' Life, or Close Encounters. Or even the Woody Allen film with the orgasmatron. There are hints of all of them in this stupendously stagey collection.
The other thing wrong with the Cuidad is that all the buildings are essentially attractions. Entertainments. We wandered into the Hemispherico to find that you can't see it at all from below ground without buying a ticket. (All the tickets are pretty dear, especially if you are on a family outing. This is not entertainment for poor people.) Our feet wore out before we went into the Science Museum. So this comment is based on detailed knowledge only of the Oceanographic. But it does seem to be true that there are no businesses, no employers, no research bodies here. There must be research connected to the various centres of arts, science, oceanography and film - but the centres are not here in the Cuidad. The actual jobs are largely low-grade service work: security, catering, cleaning. Oh yes, and putting on a scuba tank to feed the sand-sharks.
The hype suggests all this is made up for by being a unique educational-cultural experience of depth and complexity. The claim is completely unsupported by our experience. The audio-guide commentary, for example, might have appealed to some cutesy pink-wearing girl of six. It is told as if by two tittering mermaids, and sounds more like Tinkerbell than a serious engagement with the conservation crisis facing the planet's oceans. Clap three times if you believe that eating cod is still an environmentally acceptable thing to do.
In our book, these failings make the Cuidad no more than a theme park. A stunning one to see, definitely a place to visit. But we wouldn't want to work there.