The evocative title of the exhibition Cities of Artificial Excavation: The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978–1988 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal in 1994 turns out to be an oracular description of the architect’s City of Culture of Galicia in northwest Spain. Eisenman’s project of a lifetime, now 12 years in design and construction, has involved serious digging and earthmoving to create topographical man-made structures that blur figure and ground. With two buildings just open, the complex’s raw state presents an artificial landscape of thrashing, gnashing stone creatures restlessly rising up from the earth before subsiding into calm