A little while ago, before all this crazy Coronavirus crisis, I had the pleasure of working over in The City Of Arts & Sciences (Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias) in Valencia, Spain. I was there to photograph architectural stills images, shoot a handful of 360 photos and also produce a short architectural video … so it was a busy week.
Fortunately, the weather in Spain was perfect for what I had envisaged, and I enjoyed day after day of deep, azure skies and harsh, black shadows. These conditions accentuated the bold lines and shapes of the architecture, and I’m sure that the visionary architects Santiago Calatrava and Felix Candela had designed this city with the stark Spanish sun in mind.
The project began the first stages of construction in July 1996, and was inaugurated in 1998 with the opening of L’Hemisfèric. The last major component of the City of Arts and Sciences, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, was inaugurated in 2005. Even now, the architecture is a icon of futuristic architecture, and in my humble opinion, one of the most incredible structural works of art in existence.
I also found time to shoot this short architectural video. I attempted to encapsulate the flowing movement of the geometric shapes, the sweeping curves and the graphic lines, whilst emphasising the visual contrast made between the light and shade. After many hours of soul searching and scouring of the interweb, I stumbled across the most perfect soundtrack. It’s by the relatively unknown genius David Helbock, and called Concierto de Aranjuez. It’s a unique masterpiece of rudimentary string performance with vivid, Spanish undertones and quite remarkably, it’s played on the strings of the inside of a grand piano.