Santiago Calatrava fascination with light since young had inspired him to draw, design, and eventually build in his native city, Valencia. His intricate design, Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias, translated as the City of Arts and Sciences, models a perfect influence of the Valencian sun on the architect's work.
The seven cultural buildings in the City of Arts and Sciences bring a dynamism between blanched curves and rhythmic visual patterns. The materiality of the structures places much emphasis on the ability of light to outline the spatial relationships between Calatrava's shapes, and softly shift them as the sun glows and moves through the sky.
In his "White Sculptures" series, Sebastian Weiss captures the outstanding shapes of the City of Arts and Sciences that "complement each other and even merge to a harmonic unity." He imagines the appearance of the complex, with the effect of sunlight, as a "light-space installation" of systematic and creature-like forms that constantly converse with one another.
"With the series White Sculptures, I explore the flexible boundary between architecture and sculpture in Calatrava's unique architectural language. His buildings in the City of Arts and Sciences appear like vivid, corporeal objects, which contain filigree but strictly systematic structures," Weiss said, according to Arch Daily. "My intention with this image sequence is to carve out the dynamics of the stylistic vocabulary in his lively ensemble of buildings."
Weiss also revealed that he had planned to document Calatrava's work in Valencia for a long time. As he went to Valencia in Dec. 2016, he stayed there a couple more days after his work assignment to finally take photos for a series about the City of Arts and Sciences.
According to Architizer, more than 800 pictures were obtained from that shooting. The buildings in the City of Arts and Sciences project has received criticism over poor maintenance, with some saying it is not aging so well. However, Weiss's photos have made them look stunning despite the flaws.
