Santiago Calatrava. the Spaniard Who Surprised the World

San­ti­a­go Cala­tra­va is with­out a doubt one of the most inge­nious archi­tects of our time — he has earned world­wide recog­ni­tion for his amaz­ing, bold and, at the same time, care­ful­ly con­sid­ered works in the bio-tech style. I pro­pose to get acquaint­ed with his main cre­ations.

On July 28, 1951, in the tiny Span­ish town of Ben­i­mamet, which today is part of Valen­cia, a boy was born who was des­tined to write his name in the his­to­ry of mod­ern art. After grad­u­at­ing from the local School of Archi­tec­ture and the School of Art, and obtain­ing an engi­neer­ing degree from the ETH Zurich, in 1981 San­ti­a­go Cala­tra­va opened his work­shop in Zurich, where he worked as an archi­tect and engi­neer. The Spaniard drew inspi­ra­tion for his work from the works of the famous French archi­tect Le Cor­busier, the cre­ator of inter­na­tion­al style archi­tec­ture. In 1989, the archi­tect opens a branch of his work­shop in Paris

The ear­ly peri­od of Cala­trava’s work was devot­ed main­ly to sta­tions and bridges. The most famous cre­ation of his ear­ly work is the incom­pa­ra­ble Alamil­lo Bridge in Seville.

The turn­ing point in San­ti­ago’s career was his Mon­tjuïc telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions tow­er in Barcelona, ​​des­tined to be the heart of the 1992 Sum­mer Olympics.

See­ing what this Span­ish archi­tect “does” with an ordi­nary TV tow­er, many coun­tries want­ed to see the cre­ations of this uncon­di­tion­al­ly tal­ent­ed per­son with a com­plete­ly new look at famil­iar struc­tures.

As a result, Cala­tra­va was entrust­ed with the con­struc­tion of a huge sci­en­tif­ic and enter­tain­ment com­plex in Valen­cia — the City of Arts and Sci­ences, the first build­ing of which was ready already in 1996.

In 1997, in anoth­er Span­ish city — Bil­bao — a new pedes­tri­an “white bridge” of Zubisuri or, as it is also called, Cam­po Volan­tin, was com­plet­ed, built accord­ing to the project of an already world-famous archi­tect

In 1998, in the Puer­to Madero area of ​​Argen­tinean Buenos Aires, an amaz­ing pedes­tri­an Bridge of the Woman appeared, which is, in fact, the first and so far the only work of the Span­ish archi­tect in South Amer­i­ca.

In 2001, the amaz­ing Quadrac­ci Pavil­ion appeared at the Mil­wau­kee Art Muse­um, which became the first cre­ation of San­ti­a­go Cala­tra­va on Amer­i­can soil.

In 2003, a small but no less spec­tac­u­lar James Joyce Bridge was thrown across the Riv­er Lif­fey in Dublin.

The Irish liked the work of Cala­tra­va so much that it was decid­ed to order anoth­er bridge for him) Thus, in 2009, a lit­tle down­stream, the Samuel Beck­ett Bridge appeared, com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent in design and pur­pose)

And also in 2003, the con­struc­tion of the Tener­ife Con­cert Hall was com­plet­ed, on which San­ti­a­go Cala­tra­va worked for 6 years

In 2004, San­ti­a­go dis­tin­guished him­self in Cal­i­for­nia by build­ing a bridge in Tur­tle Bay, which is, in com­bi­na­tion, the world’s largest sun­di­al! He called it that — Sun­di­al Bridge

In 2005, the Spaniard com­plet­ed the con­struc­tion of his first sky­scraper — Turn­ing Tor­so in the Swedish port town of Malmö — which aroused pub­lic delight with its “twist­ed” shape.

In 2008, the entrance to Jerusalem was adorned with the new Cala­tra­va Bridge, imme­di­ate­ly nick­named the “Harp of David” for its shape and imme­di­ate­ly becom­ing one of the sym­bols of this ancient city.

In 2009, San­ti­a­go Cala­tra­va pre­sent­ed his kinet­ic com­po­si­tion at the Israel Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy

The last com­plet­ed cre­ation of the Span­ish archi­tect was the new build­ing of the Liège-Guillemins sta­tion in Bel­gium, which struck even the most invet­er­ate crit­ics of our time with the light­ness of its forms.

Cala­tra­va is cur­rent­ly design­ing a future train sta­tion, the World Trade Ten­tra Trans­porta­tion Cen­ter, at the restored World Trade Cen­ter in New York. And now, due to the cri­sis, the con­struc­tion of an object that was sup­posed to become the pearl of the Spaniard’s cre­ativ­i­ty, the Chica­go Spare sky­scraper, which would become the most amaz­ing and beau­ti­ful build­ing of the “city of sky­scrap­ers”, has been com­plete­ly stopped.

And here’s what the tow­er would look like from below…

In addi­tion to the above projects, San­ti­a­go Cala­tra­va built the Brook­field Place office com­plex in Toron­to, Cana­da; erect­ed the Kuwait Pavil­ion at the 1992 Seville World’s Fair; worked on the devel­op­ment of the sta­tion and the remod­el­ing of the uni­ver­si­ty library in Zurich, Switzer­land; restored in 1992–1995 the cen­tral span of the Berlin Ober­baum­brücke bridge; designed one of the Lis­bon metro sta­tions in 1998; opened the 21st cen­tu­ry with the con­struc­tion of a new ter­mi­nal at Bil­bao Air­port in Spain; rebuilt in 2004 the Olympic Sports Com­plex in Athens for the Olympics .. Each of his cre­ations was some­what dif­fer­ent from the pre­vi­ous ones, each had its own zest, and this is not a com­plete list of his bril­liant projects =)