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Most of the debate about Santiago Calatrava's new opera house in Santa Cruz de Tenerife has focused on its imagery and form. Is it a giant eye, opening a sleepy lid, or a wave crashing against the shore? Is that enormous curving element bending over the concrete shells of the performing spaces a protective wing, a sensual leaf, or a threatening spike? Such talk is understandable, considering the building's larger-than-life, sculptural swagger. But its success or failure depends only partly on its role as an architectural object. The true test of this $75 million project will be its impact on an even grander scheme: the transformation of Tenerife's industrialized waterfront into a 21st-century cultural district. The largest of the seven Canary Islands--volcanic outposts of Spanish rule off the coast of Morocco--Tenerife has flourished mostly as a place for European tourists to bake on beaches and party in discos. The opera house--officially called the Auditorio de Tenerife--aims to lure some of these vacationers away from the resorts and into town.
Built on land that had previously been occupied by an oil refinery, the Auditorio helps reconnect Santa Cruz (the largest city on Tenerife) to its old harbor and the great blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Calatrava's 1996 convention center, with its 890-foot-long steel arch and ring of concrete buttresses, stands nearby, as does the Presidency Building, the ruggedly handsome government seat designed by the talented local firm AMP Arquitectos [record, March 2001, page 100]. Using this cluster of civic structures as the foundation of a cultural hub, the island has hired Herzog & de Meuron to design the Museo scar Domnguez and develop a master plan for the harbor district known as Cabo Llanos. The idea is to create a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood that can accommodate the residents' love of music and the arts and give tourists something other than the sun to appreciate.
Residents of Tenerife had talked about building a concert hall since the mid-1970s, and the island's government had set aside funds for the project starting in 1984. After initially thinking small and quick, the authorities decided to expand the scope of the project and hire a star architect to create a world-class opera house. In 1992, Calatrava got the job....