- Time of past OR future Camino
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I've uploaded a set of photos of the new City of Culture complex which you've probably seen on the hill.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peregrino_ ... /lightbox/
Ever since my first arrival in Santiago in 2008 when I saw this strange mirrored thing perched on a hill, I became curious about it and no-one seemed to be able to really explain to me what it was (or was going to be). A couple of month's back I finally had the time to walk up the hill. It's well worth a visit and a great way to stretch those camino legs you've developed if you're stuck in Santiago for a couple of days and tiring of bar life and trinket shops. I was staying in Acuario which is probably one of the nearest albergues and it took us about a 25-minute walk to get up there.
I found it a really mixed experience: in places a wonderfully ambitious design and in others suffering from excess or else scrimped quality (both perhaps linked to the history of a building which was designed when there was money and built when there wasn't). You'll see hundreds of granite seats on the way up the hill which probably no-one will ever sit on. The building has some great parts that you can walk over, a strange sensation like being on the back of a whale (?), but in other places where they have used metal panels, people have assumed you can walk over these too and they have been bent. There's also a section where the weeds are already growing through the flagstones – even though the building has yet to be finished. And some of the joins on the glass panelling look like they won't last long. However some of the stone is fabulous with these so-called 'tartan veins' running seams across the buildings and also the gully between the buildings in the main complex is dramatic. I feel it could have been the most outstanding building complex I'd ever experienced, especially if they'd taken further the idea of being able to walk over the top of a living/working space, and developed further the gullies between the buildings but even so it's still incredibly stimulating.
You'll see on one of the pics from the gallery containing the models and history of construction that there's quite a lot of flannel about it, probably not helped by the translation:
'The CODEX is about how the City was created, what the currents that overlap it on the land are, the energy channels that define it like furrows and act as elements generating the new architecture, how the Pilgrim's Road to Santiago and its traces on the historical city will be transferred to a new contemporary reality.'
So the blurb obviously tries to link it to the history of the pilgrimmage through the idea of the CODEX and I think that's a bit far-fetched.
I'd be very interested to know what others have made of it and whether you think it might become part of the experience of Santiago or whether it's doomed to be marked down as a massive white elephant...
Happy New Year to all of you, tom
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peregrino_ ... /lightbox/
Ever since my first arrival in Santiago in 2008 when I saw this strange mirrored thing perched on a hill, I became curious about it and no-one seemed to be able to really explain to me what it was (or was going to be). A couple of month's back I finally had the time to walk up the hill. It's well worth a visit and a great way to stretch those camino legs you've developed if you're stuck in Santiago for a couple of days and tiring of bar life and trinket shops. I was staying in Acuario which is probably one of the nearest albergues and it took us about a 25-minute walk to get up there.
I found it a really mixed experience: in places a wonderfully ambitious design and in others suffering from excess or else scrimped quality (both perhaps linked to the history of a building which was designed when there was money and built when there wasn't). You'll see hundreds of granite seats on the way up the hill which probably no-one will ever sit on. The building has some great parts that you can walk over, a strange sensation like being on the back of a whale (?), but in other places where they have used metal panels, people have assumed you can walk over these too and they have been bent. There's also a section where the weeds are already growing through the flagstones – even though the building has yet to be finished. And some of the joins on the glass panelling look like they won't last long. However some of the stone is fabulous with these so-called 'tartan veins' running seams across the buildings and also the gully between the buildings in the main complex is dramatic. I feel it could have been the most outstanding building complex I'd ever experienced, especially if they'd taken further the idea of being able to walk over the top of a living/working space, and developed further the gullies between the buildings but even so it's still incredibly stimulating.
You'll see on one of the pics from the gallery containing the models and history of construction that there's quite a lot of flannel about it, probably not helped by the translation:
'The CODEX is about how the City was created, what the currents that overlap it on the land are, the energy channels that define it like furrows and act as elements generating the new architecture, how the Pilgrim's Road to Santiago and its traces on the historical city will be transferred to a new contemporary reality.'
So the blurb obviously tries to link it to the history of the pilgrimmage through the idea of the CODEX and I think that's a bit far-fetched.
I'd be very interested to know what others have made of it and whether you think it might become part of the experience of Santiago or whether it's doomed to be marked down as a massive white elephant...
Happy New Year to all of you, tom
