This exhibition stemmed from a partnering agreement concluded in September 2011 by Madrid's Círculo de Bellas Artes, the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and the Centre for Public Works Studies and Experimentation (CEDEX-CEHOPU).

It borrowed heavily from UPM Cultural Landscape Research Team findings on how Spain's and Portugal's accession to the European Economic Community in 1986 impacted these nations' infrastructures and communications. The scale models, drawings, photographs and conventional and audio-visual maps on display induced meditation around the effect of that prosperous economic cycle on architectural production, urban renewal and a new approach to the landscape. The project's head researchers were Miguel Aguiló and Juan Miguel Hernández de León. The preparatory work for the exhibition included compiling and reviewing information, defining the works to be covered, designing the museography, formulating the preliminary texts for the exhibition and catalogue, acquiring project material and documents and building the maps and ancillary materials.

The research eschewed a linear historical narrative, drawing rather from archaeological methods. In the words of its curator Miguel Hernández de León, the exhibition aimed to 'excavate and reveal the many strata that comprise the record of visible change in Spanish territory in a period short on duration and long on consequences'.

The cities portrayed afforded an overview of Spain in a key era. As host of the Olympic Games in 1992, Barcelona remodelled its port and implemented consensus-based planning. Bilbao transformed the River Nervión estuary and built an underground, reaping the benefits of the establishment of the Guggenheim Museum. Madrid, as the capital city, witnessed major urban operations such as Atocha Station, the restructuring of the Prado-Recoletos thoroughfare, the Madrid Río project, the expansion of the underground and the burying of its M-30 ring road. In Santiago de Compostela, World Heritage City since 1985, the economy, tourism and culture were integrated into town planning. Seville, capitalising on its navigable river, new bridges and high-speed train connection was the venue for the 1992 World's Fair.

The showing analysed architectural and engineering works not as separate elements but as transformational facilities and public works which, from a multi-disciplinary and comprehensive perspective and again in Hernández de León's words, served as: 'containers of endeavour or depositories of fragments of memory'.

That overview provided a joint vision of architectural - engineering heritage and its territorial imprint in areas such as building, urban mobility and transit, water and energy, environmental protection, urban planning and access roads.

The exhibition content adopted the form of drawings, spectacular scale models, photographs and conventional and audio-visual maps. Its highlights included novel mapping techniques such as chronograms that seek to materialise the deformations of geographic space prompted by speed of travel, energy systems and cultural landscapes. All these tools were geared to inviting visitors to reflect on that economic cycle and its effect on and consequences for urban and territorial transformation.

The catalogue of the exhibition contained a series of articles analysing the transformation of the cityscapes of the five urban centres selected and other wider-ranging factors that characterised the period, such as economic growth (with facts and figures furnished by Professor Emilio Ontiveros) and the territorial significance of the built culture (as seen by Miguel Aguiló, professor of art and aesthetics in engineering).

The exhibition was organised by the Municipality of Valencia in conjunction with the Demetrio Ribes Chair (Valencia University, UV-CITMA). It aimed to showcase the lighthouses peppering the Valencian coast and raise public awareness of their historic, symbolic, social, technological, strategic and landscapist connotations as a cultural legacy forming part of Valencian society's historic memory.

The history of these lighthouses was broached from a number of angles: the myths and realities in which they are cloaked and their construction, in which civil engineers' art of building played a leading role. In the context of the latter, maritime lighting began to be installed in the Mediterranean in 1852. Supervised by the Lighthouse Commission, the task was entrusted to the Corps of Civil Engineers, which was commissioned to draft detailed designs for each lighthouse, including site, appearance, building, floodlight and masonry works (tower and bank of rooms), and to draft the budget and specifications. With its combination of high technology and traditional architecture, each lighthouse is a prime example of 'engineering architecture'. Most of Valencian lighthouses are sited in isolated, privileged places within environmentally protected areas.

The exhibition invited visitors to discover the lighthouse keeper's solitary profession, the technology supporting these structures, their symbolic and cultural meanings, idyllic literary portrayal and their relationship to port development and lighting facilities. Lighthouses indicate distinctive points on the coast and constitute a reference for seafarers to establish their position and route. They are significant landmarks on the coastal landscape, which is systematically depicted in nautical charts with drawings for its readier identification.

In the Valencian region, the shape of the coast, its materials, colours and physiography of its terrain are key elements. Landmarks visible from the sea include profiles of mountain ranges, ancient defensive lookout towers and fortresses and, since the third quarter of the twentieth century, modern apartment towers, inhabited primarily by tourists. Lighthouse siting, form and size are essential to providing seafarers with a reference of the surrounding coast. Lighthouses are sited on headlands, in capes, on low-lying sandy shores and islands as well as in urban areas or on dikes and jetties in harbours. Lighthouses are also stores of cultural and symbolic meaning. Hosts of legends have arisen around them throughout history. They inspire pictorial reproduction, with photography and painting contributing enormously to their iconic personality.

The exhibition carried visitors on a journey along the Valencian coast, focusing on lighthouses as significant elements of that landscape.