Day6 In the morning, we first went to visit Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spanish: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia). As arranged before, we went to the UPV by the agency bus called Mundo Bus. After we arrived, Prof. Luis Angel Ruiz, the sub-director of the International Relations Office of the UPV, welcomed us kindly and introduced their university to us. The UPV is a young institution that began in 1968. It has a concentrated campus, which does like the one we have visited in Barcelona. There are over 35,000 students studying, about 2600 teachers and staff working in their university. The UPV is one of the three Spanish universities which first send and host students. It has a high percentage of mobility and both the numbers of incoming and outgoing students have increased over about 3 times. Most of outgoing students are sent to Italy, Germany and France. In their university, there are about 750 bachelor students and 160 master students studying in geomatics and surveying. They need to study 4 years for a bachelor degree and then 2 years for the master degree or 3-4 years for doctorate degree. They are provided laboratories on, for example, photogrammetry and geophysics and also different surveying instruments. Then, Angel Martin, a professor of The School of Geodetic Engineering, Cartography and Surveying gave us a brief introduction on their research activities. One of them is the application of remote sensing and environmental cartography, e.g. automatic updating of land use or land cover databases, extraction of forestry parameters. The other research projects are mainly focused on the applications of geodesy and GNSS, e.g. earthquake monitoring, monitoring in civil engineering. After that, a talk on the technical aspects on the buildings in the City of Art and Science was given by Prof. Fernando Buchon, who has taken a part in the surveyor works in the construction of the City of Art and Science. He showed us the photos of the construction process and hand drawings of the design of the buildings, and briefly explained the design of such buildings, e.g. the shape, and how the windows or doors open. During the coffee break, the student helpers working in the International Relation Office were invited to chat and have some food with us. We shared our school life, hobbies, living condition and etc. After the nice break, we visited the School and Historical cartography collection and had a campus walk. In the collection room, there are many maps from different centuries. They showed the exploration of the whole world and the change in world maps. The UPV try to provide their students everything they need so in their campus, there are over 106,000 sq.metre green areas and a 5200 sq.metre building for student activities After that, they took us to a restaurant nearby, and this meal is a big gift from them. We have a leisure chat during the meal, e.g. talking about our major, future career, the difference in the living style between Hong Kong people and Spanish. We also had the famous Spanish food, paella, as our main course. We all were happy about that and this is a delicious meal. We really want to say ‘thank you’ again to them as they have given a great reception and meal. They are nice, enthusiastic and friendly. They helped us to contact with the agent bus driver to postpone the time for picking us up, and even have arranged a guide for us in the visit of the City of Art and Science and passed the duty of guiding us to the guide. We get on the agent bus and had an around 30-minute bus jorunery, we arrived the City of Arts and Sciences. The City of Arts and Sciences was surrounded by water and there were totally four modern buildings, they were Palau De Les Arts, Hemisferic, Museo De Las Ciencias, Agora. The City of Arts and Sciences were designed by two designers at different period of time. These two great designers are Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela. They first built Hemisferic, then in the order of Palau De Les Arts, Museo De Las Ciencias, Agora. The City of Arts and Sciences is situated at the end of the former riverbed of the river Turia, which was drained and rerouted after a catastrophic flood in 1957. The old riverbed was turned into a picturesque sunken park. This river is 13 meter long at least, but the part belonged to the City of Arts and Sciences is only 2 to 3 meters. Also, the depth of water was carefully designed, since the colour of reflected light varied with the depth of water. Therefore, In the City of Arts and Sciences, water is green in colour. Also, the main colour f the buildings were always white and blue, it was used to resemble the sky. Besides, why there were some water around these four buildings? Not only is the reason of river, but Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela were interested to reflect the image of the buildings by water. Then, the image in water and buildings in reality can be in opposite direction. Why did Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela imagine the design of these buildings? They wanted to resemble human eyes at that time. Therefore, they designed the building called Hemisferic, the ball inside the building resemble the eyeball. For Palau De Les Arts, somebody said that it looks like a huge ship, but someone said that it is a shark with opening mouth. In my opinion, shark with an opening mouth is more suitable. They also decided to use glass glazing since it can allow light penetrating through the window and provide light for indoor environment. When constructing these four buildings, there were several technical problems. For Hemisferic, there was only one side of door in the initial design, but it cannot balance the load and have an equilibrium, therefore, the Hemisferic we can see in Valencia has two sides of doors. Also, the joint part of structural steel in the initial design were too weak, therefore they needed to use stronger components to withstand the load. For Museo De Las Ciencias, holes were drilled on the window, but it cannot withstand the corrosion of water and air, therefore, Museo De Las Ciencias we can see nowadays, as glass glazing on the window. What are the functions of these buildings? The Agora is a space designed to hold a variety of events such as concerts, performances, exhibitions. And many important meetings are held in this building. For Palau De Les Arts, it is an opera house, which provides 4 large rooms, 1 main room. And there are many opera shows held in Palau De Les Arts. For Hemisferic, it is a cinema. There are not only one kind of cinema, but various types, such as 3D, Imax cinema. This City of Arts and Sciences provides a leisure time for Spanish and it is really a great place which combines the advantages of art and science. Then we dashed to the hotel and took a rest. We went to a restaurant to have a buffet and put an end to this day 6.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 15:11:51 +0000
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