El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, Valencia Opera House, Spain. November 2009
(Click picture to enlarge)
"The architect must not only understand drawing, but music." ~ Marcus Vitruvius PollioWe've been looking at "night" pictures this week in Carmi's Theme and they have all been lovely. Without "light", however, there can be no "night" pictures or "darkness" pictures. All of the most amazing pictures taken at night have light as a focus point... the reflected light of the moon, candlelight, fireworks, the lights of a city at night and so on. Light not only dispels the night's darkness, it gives it shape and form; light makes the night... visible and memorable.
This opera house in Valencia, Spain is an amazing feat of modern architecture designed by Santiago Calatrava. In daylight its concrete and steel form covered with crushed tiles is said to suggest a large warrior's helmet or the cross between an immense seagoing vessel and an alien spacecraft. It is huge, containing four performance spaces with a total of 4,000 seats. My brother performed in an opera here in 2009 and took this nighttime picture. The light makes all the difference in this photo... it brings a magical quality to the scene; the golden roadways leading to a silvery spacecraft... a huge "eye" in the middle of the city. The center "pupil" of the eye is reflecting the city itself or perhaps shows the cityscape of its home world. All the mystery this evokes... the architect did his job well!
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Carmi's Theme ~ Night
