The Botín Foundation for Arts and Culture was built in the former port area, which for a long time cut the Atlantic Ocean from the city center. The situation has changed with the appearance of a new cultural center on the site of a parking lot for the ferry terminal, but the changes for the better would have been much more modest if it had not been for the initiative of the city authorities: they hid a busy highway (13 million cars per year) in a tunnel that passed between city blocks and a pier. This allowed the historic gardens of Pereda to be extended to the ocean shore: it is on their new territory that the Botín center is located.
It is raised above the ground on white supports and is partially covered with greenery, so as not to disturb the integrity of the seascape that opens from this point. For the same purpose, the volume of the building is divided into two "hemispheres", connected by passages and terraces made of glass and steel. At the same time, the building protrudes nine meters into the Atlantic, forming a kind of springboard.
The facades are covered with 280,000 rounded mother-of-pearl tiles that emphasize the streamlined shape of the building. The ends of the "hemispheres", facing the ocean and the city, are glazed, completely glass - and the entrance pavilion is the only ground-level room in the center. There is an information center, a museum shop, a cafe and a restaurant.
Above it, in the larger, western "hemisphere", are two floors of exhibition halls with a sophisticated system of filtering sunlight in the ceilings typical of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop projects.
The eastern part houses a hall for 300 spectators and an educational center. An LED screen was installed on the western facade and an amphitheater was erected for film screenings and broadcasting of what is happening in the building.
The new part of the Pereda Gardens was designed by the landscape architect Fernando Caruncho: during the reconstruction, the area of this city park has grown from 20,000 to 48,000 m2, and the green spaces there - from 7,003 to 20,056 m2. A new tourist information center has been built there, also designed by the Piano Bureau.
