Santiago Calatrava

Conversaciones Con Estudiantes

Philip Jodidio

Darin: Lucerne Station Hall, Lucerne, Switzerland, 1983-89. - S. 86-91.

CALATRAVA SANTIAGO. Edition trilingue français, anglais et allemand

Alexander Tzonis

Very few designers of this century-- a century dominated by specialization and fragmentation-- can be called universal, but Santiago Calatrava is one of these few. In his numerous buildings, engineering projects, sculptures, and furniture designs, this Spanish architect whose practice is based in Switzerland has developed a unique poetics of morphology that overlaps structure and movement. Combining art and science, technology and architecture, Calatrava's bridges and buildings create a sublime elegance in their urban contexts. With dynamic curves, leaning vertical elements, and mechanically operable roofs, they embody potential motion. In this book, Alexander Tzonis explores Calatrava's "poetics of movement" not only in the architect's large-scale work, but also in his drawings and sculptures. The book features thirty-five projects, fully documented with photographs, drawings, and sketches. Included are Calatrava's most recent works-- the Milwaukee Art Museum Addition and the Orient Station in Lisbon-- and his best known, from the Montjuic Tower to the Alameda Bridge.

The Poetics of Movement

"This is the first time that I have made the commitment to give a series of talks with the specific intention of communicating my experience. The things I am saying, I am saying for the next generation-people who will set and invent other styles and who will find their own way, just as I have integrated the works of those who have been working before me."-from Santiago Calatrava: Conversations with StudentsWith these words, Santiago Calatrava launched a recent series of lectures at MIT filled with insight, anecdote, and hard information about the practice of design. As the most important figure at the intersection of architecture and engineering, Calatrava reflects on his person path and ties it to his design work. Includes original sketches by Calatrava.

Conversations with Students-The MIT Lectures

Bernhard Klein

It is not just by chance that Calatrava's international career is closely linked with Stadelhofen S-Bahn station. It is true that he had successfully realized remarkable buildings before 1983/84, but, as well as the impressively unified combination of structure and architectural idea, ultimately -- and the example of Stadelhofen in particular shows this -- it was the successful implementation of a concept placing a new interpretation on the city that established Calatrava's present fame. As usual Calatrava's work brought more or less zealous imitators on to the scene, but they did not succeed in moving beyond isolated imitations to anything like a comparable overall effect: an indication of the fact that construction methods and choice of materials are of small value without an urban planning concept based in time. It is the solution in terms of urban development in particular that shows Calatrava's undoubted merit and the special quality of his unreactionary and forward-thinking contribution to the Zurich cityspace. The face of the city has not only been transformed on the micro-level of detail, but also as a result of his intervention on the macro-level the zero and starting point of urban reality -- in the direction of a post-industrial and urbanized open society. This urban revolution, grasped by Calatrava with a sleep walker's certainty and implemented monumentally by means of the planning methods handed down to him, now induces perplexity in urban planners, thus tarred with Neo-Rationalism and Deconstructivism in two respects. Calatrava's Stadelhofen is the beginning of a U-topia: it is a non-place, but creates a new urban quality; it is a non-type, but creates a differentnotion of architecture and city; it stands for perception of the dissolution of a harmonious, compact city shape and for the conflict increasingly occurring in cities between reactionary citycore and avant-garde concepts of urban nebula. Bernhard Klein taught for many years History of Urbanism at the ETH in Zurich. Recently he became Professor of Architectural History at the Hochschule fur Technik Stuttgart.

Bahnhof Stadelhofen, Zürich

Santiago Calatrava has not only revived the art of constructing bridges - his buildings as well transcend the purely functional and heighten the quality of their surroundings with their sculptural character. Calatrava first achieved recognition with the Stadelhofen train station in Zurich. His reputation grew with the completion of further innovative projects such as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (New York), Teneriffa's concert hall and the Milwaukee Art Museum expansion project. Most recently he attracted worldwide attention with the 2004 Olympic Stadium in Athens.

Public Buildings

Calatrava

Michael Levin

Drawings and Sculptures

Exclusive insights into the creative process of a grand seigneur of contemporary architecture.

Santiago Calatrava

About

Books

Join the club