The great IMAX and 3D cinema and planetarium of the City of Arts and Sciences of Valencia, l'Hemisfèric, celebrates 25 years as the successful dean of the complex designed by Santiago Calatrava, which laid the foundations of futuristic tourism, cinema and advertising in Spain and which already accumulates ten million viewers.
Its sociocultural and economic influence has not stopped growing since that April 16, 1998, when the gigantic eye that symbolized human wisdom was inaugurated and that began to materialize the ambitious City of Arts and Sciences: located almost at the end of the southern section from the old bed of the Turia, at that time it was still very far from the center of the Valencian capital and offered an endless horizon of urban expansion, as has happened.
The coming-out of the Hemisfèric, whose oval silhouette, dominated by the gigantic white and bluish concrete vault and the glass and steel grilles, is already part of the architectural profile of Valencia in the 21st century, gave way to the gradual arrival of the Museum de las Ciencias, the Palau de les Arts, the Ocenogràfic (the only element of the complex that is not the work of Calatrava), the landscaped arcade of the Umbracle and the Ágora now converted into a CaixaForum.
All of it in a sort of futuristic islands scattered in a great lagoon of leisure and culture, family, partying and sports, film and advertising shoots and, above all, a new urban life in the open air that is now recognizable everywhere. the world, thanks also in recent years to social networks and the "instagrammability" of its settings, landscapes and activities.
That April 16, Eduardo Zaplana was, as President of the Generalitat, a great host at the inaugural ceremony where he was always flanked by the mayoress, Rita Barberá, and by the Valencian architect who was already internationally recognized but who, since then, marked - often surrounded by controversy - a before and after in the history of architecture and urbanism based on the spectacular nature of its buildings and infrastructures and the impossible forms that white concrete allows.
All this before the gaze of hundreds of guests and onlookers who had to attend an evening marked by the wind; The area still offered a soulless image, surrounded by cranes, architectural skeletons in full construction and a lot of land to build, both residential and administrative, commercial and judicial.
The great cultural attraction of the night event was the performance, accompanied by a symphony orchestra of Valencian musicians, by the composer Michael Nyman, who performed his famous pieces for the film "El piano" and advanced others from "Gattaca", recently released in the United States and which has remained a cult film due to the dystopian future marked by genetic engineering -and its manipulation-, an argument that was then used to proudly frame the scientific and informative objectives of the City of Arts.
But since the concert was in the open air, the famous British pianist had to play with a member of the orchestra at his side, holding the sheet music so that it would not fly away.
And as the Valencian tradition marks, the climax was a pyromusical number with fireworks that, for the time, was the ultimate. Five days later, it was officially opened to the public.
At that time it was reported that the Hemisfèric had cost 3,500 million pesetas (21 million euros), 10% of the total estimated cost of that original City of Arts and Sciences still to be completed (about 210 million euros); In 2012, Calatrava's study detailed that the global project, without counting the Ágora (commissioned in 2005), amounted to 1,100 million euros.
From 1998 to March 31 of this year, 10,228,895 spectators have passed through the Hemisfèric, according to official data to which EFE has had access.
It is the only theater in Spain with an active Dome screen and with three different projection systems: IMAX Dome 15/70 mm large-format cinema, DCI 2D-3D digital cinema and FullDome 2D and 3D with Atmos surround sound.
Since 1998 it has screened 93 films (mainly documentaries on nature, travel and culture, the environment, astronomy and space exploration, new technologies and science) with a total of 70,464 sessions. In addition, he has summer and winter cycles as a live planetarium since 2010.
In these 25 years, it has hosted almost 580 events and some 280 film or series shoots (Westworld, Citadel and, these weeks, one from Disney about Star Wars) or commercials with image rights, from congresses and business meetings and promotional announcements ( especially motor and fashion) to premieres of international productions, some of which were filmed in this complex, such as Tomorrowland starring George Clooney.
In addition, in 2021 it led the list of movie theaters in Spain with the highest number of viewers, according to SGAE figures, with 144,908 attendees; in 2022 it reached 360,395 tickets, and in the first quarter of 2023 it has already exceeded 72,000.
And the building? With a constructed area of 14,000 m2 on a sheet of water of 24,000, its already iconic shape symbolizes a great eye "open to the stars and knowledge" where the eyelids are large retractable and transparent slats and its pupil, the hemispherical dome of the concave screen of the IMAX system, 900 m2 and 24 meters in diameter.
Its inner perimeter ring (walking through it is an experience typical of science fiction) bears the name of the astronomical popularizer Carl Sagan: his television Cosmos thus mutates into the immaculate setting of an architectural globe that he focused on 25 years ago, without complexes and no expense spared, into the future.
