L'Hemisfèric

Calatrava's own description of L'Hemisfèric is architecture as anatomy: a lens-shaped concrete shell some 120 metres long standing for an eyelid, its two end walls made of corrugated, folding glass panes that slide open like a blink to reveal the planetarium sphere inside, and the whole building set in a shallow reflecting pool so that the sphere and its mirror image together read as an iris and pupil. Inside the sphere is a 24-metre IMAX dome doubling as a planetarium and laserium. It was the first of the six structures Calatrava eventually built for the City of Arts and Sciences on the former riverbed of the Turia, commissioned by the Valencian regional government and opened on 16 April 1998 as the complex's public debut — well before the Museu de les Ciències, the Palau de les Arts or Félix Candela's separately designed L'Oceanogràfic followed on the same site.