Valencia, Spain
Architect: Santiago Calatrava
Santiago Calatrava almost brought Spain’s third largest city, Valencia, to its knees financially with the massive cost overruns of his futuristic vision for the City of Arts and Sciences. The cultural complex ended up costing almost three times the original €300m budget. Nevertheless, the retro-futuristic result by the Valencian-born architect is quite something to behold, nestling in the dry (redirected) riverbed, now a park, that forms a green spine through the centre of the city.