city of culture of galicia spain

the evocative title of 
the exhibition Cities
of Artificial Excavation: 
The Work of Peter
Eisenman, 1978–1988 

at the canadian centre for architecture in montreal 
in 1994 turns out to be an oracular description of 
the architect’s city of culture of galicia in northwest
Spain. eisenman’s  project
of a lifetime, now 12 years in design and construction, 
has involved serious digging  and earthmoving to create 
topographical man-made structures that  blur figure and 
ground. 

With two buildings just open, the complex’s raw state
 presents  an artificial landscape of thrashing, gnashing 
stone creatures restlessly rising up from the earth before 
subsiding into calm ripples.
eisenman won the competition for the city of culture 
in 1999 at  the right time economically, and in the right 
country architecturally. 
Since the end of franco’s reign in 1975, Spanish 
architects have been turning out high-quality modernist 
design in a country also receptive to the tours de force of
internationally known architects. after frank gehry’s 
guggenheim museum in Bilbao opened in 1997, 
manuel fraga iribarne, the president of the Xunta of 
galicia, initiated the 1 million-squarefoot research,
study, and arts center for his own region. the brief 
for the city of culture ambitiously called for a 
periodicals archive, library, museum, music theater,
central services and administration building, and 
international arts center with a budget of around 
$145 million