L'Hemisfèric Building, Valencia

Sitting at the heart of Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, L’Hemisfèric looks less like a building and more like a giant eye that has seen the future — and apparently approved the blueprints. Designed by Santiago Calatrava and completed in 1998, it houses an IMAX cinema, planetarium, and laserium — because one futuristic eyeball clearly deserves multiple jobs...

Its nickname, the “Eye of Knowledge,” does not exactly leave much to the imagination. The structure stretches across about 13,000 square meters and appears to open like an enormous eyelid over a surrounding pool. The glass-bottomed water feature completes the illusion, turning the whole building into one huge architectural eye — part science center, part planetarium, and part something you wouldn't want to blink...

Inside, the main hall leads down into a vaulted concrete lobby, while the planetarium itself sits beneath a semi-spherical dome. Above it, long aluminum awnings rise together to form a brise-soleil roof, opening along the curve of the eye and revealing the “iris” beneath. Even the underground areas get their share of daylight, thanks to translucent glass panels that soften the space without ruining the spaceship mood.

And then there is the echo. Stand near one pillar, place someone else by the opposite one, and you can speak to each other across the building as though the architecture has decided to become a very stylish telephone. For a place shaped like an eye, L’Hemisfèric also has excellent hearing...