Santiago Calatrava

[Vertigo58]

Who is Santiago Calatrava?

Santiago Calatrava is a world-renowned architect, engineer and sculptor. Already well-known in Europe for his unique design aesthetic, Calatrava is beginning to make a name for himself in the United States. Starting with the Milwaukee Art Museum, he has designed a number of public buildings and bridges in the U.S. in recent years. As both Engineer and Architect, his works take materials like concrete, glass and steel beyond the normal bounds.

Like many of his buildings, Calatrava's body of work is in constant motion.

Inglese:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_Calatrava

Spanolo:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_Calatrava

[Vertigo58]

Ok so I will be the first to comment. I love L' Hemispheric. It is so futuristic in design and just dazzles. Reminds me of the machines in War of The World's. They even have concerts in front of it. Just amazing!

Look how neat it appears at night! We need all of this in Houston like now!!!

[Subdude]

It is amazing. I love just about everything Calatrava has done. Unlike the other "starchitects" he has a knack for making his works elegant, not just eye-catching.

[Vertigo58]

It is amazing. I love just about everything Calatrava has done. Unlike the other "starchitects" he has a knack for making his works elegant, not just eye-catching.

Charlie Rose interview with Calatrava:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YOsph6r8sk

and I totally agree with every single comment. Now I must go to Valencia! Ottimo!

[editor]

I like a lot of what he's done and I every couple of days I wander over to the site of the Chicago Spire to see how things are coming along, but he's starting to feel like a one-hit wonder. Like Gehry. I think Gehry jumped the shark when he was on the Simpsons. I think unless Calatrava learns a new trick, he's headed for the same fate.

Musicians and painters have "periods" where you can see their skills develop and their interests change over time. Maybe architects do that, too, and I just can't see it because I don't have the necessary booklearnin'. But if the average person can't understand your art, then what's the point?

[strickn]

I like a lot of what he's done and I every couple of days I wander over to the site of the Chicago Spire to see how things are coming along, but he's starting to feel like a one-hit wonder. Like Gehry. I think Gehry jumped the shark when he was on the Simpsons. I think unless Calatrava learns a new trick, he's headed for the same fate.

Musicians and painters have "periods" where you can see their skills develop and their interests change over time. Maybe architects do that, too, and I just can't see it because I don't have the necessary booklearnin'. But if the average person can't understand your art, then what's the point?

Even if the public is a moving target, and further, one which is not paying attention long enough, good thought to relate it to artistry.

Calatrava is more attuned than other products of the 20th C. to the fact that objects resemble other things - he orchestrates from it, whereas modern architects often try to ignore likeness and wind up with semi-austere productions bearing semi-embarrassing resemblances.

I went to an exhibit of his models and drawings at the Meadows Museum in Dallas six or eight years ago, though, and came away less admiring of his activity in the world, instead of more. I can't quite get at it, at the thought behind that - and maybe I feel more confident that I can identify what you noticed than what I do... whatever warning flags that may trigger... but I think that what we notice is that his invocation of "living forms" in his works is essentially a sham. His compound sweeps do little or nothing to break free from more dully styled contemporaries, when the kind of break that would matter is the kind to produce buildings that are more whole (in the sense that Christopher Alexander describes, for instance. His series "the Nature of Order" - and his renowned book "A Pattern Language", which I haven't gotten around to, but which is available at many libraries, would explain what the point of architectural 'life' is and what is meant by 'wholeness' in the previous sentence. It is completely useful knowledge//end edit). Both approaches to modern architecture, the savant's and the design schooler's, are skilled sculpture but are sociologically insignificant. Equivalent ditzes in the bar.

[N Judah]

Well he knows structural engineering which is more than nearly all architects can even pretend to know. So I don't know aobut "ditzes at the bar" but he does lay it all out for ya.

[Vertigo58]

I found this excerpt to be of interest, the Critism part that is

Calatrava's work in Bilbao has been criticized for impracticality. The airport lacks facilities and the bridge's glass tiles are prone to break and getting slippery under the local weather.In 2007, Calatrava sued Bilbao for allowing Arata Isozaki to remove a bar from the bridge to connect it to the Arata Isozaki towers. The judge ruled against Calatrava saying that, although the building design is protected by intellectual rights laws, public concerns prevail over intellectual property.

Calatrava gifted the Municipality of Venice with the project of a new bridge on the "Canal Grande" in 1996. As of 2007, the project is still under construction and it has gone though numerous structural changes because of the mechanical instability of the structure and the excessive weight of the bridge,which would cause the bank of the canal to fail. In 10 years the project has been inspected by more than 8 different consultants and the cost has raised up to three times the original expectations however the work has not been finished yet.

[strickn]

http://www.italyheaven.co.uk/veneto/venice...rand-canal.html

[Vertigo58]

http://www.italyheaven.co.uk/veneto/venice...rand-canal.html

Great article!

Here are great views of his other bridge designs.

http://www.municipio.re.it/retecivica/urp/...CA?opendocument

e' stuttura's molto bella's!

[editor]

So he makes lots of pretty designs... but not all of them actually work in the real world.

Well, if he's not designing for the real world, what is he designing for?

[Vertigo58]

He started out as a sculptor which is of no surprise. I did not realize the Turning Torso was real but it is. We need this in Houston people!

Recognition

Turning Torso won the 2005 Emporis Skyscraper Award beating the Q1 Tower in Gold Coast City in Queensland, Australia and MontivideoTower in Rotterdam. The structure also won the 2005 MIPIM award in Cannes, France for Best International Residential Building, beating the1 West India Quay in London and Espirito Santo Plaza in Miami.

The construction of Turning Torso was featured in an episode of the Discovery Channel's series Extreme Engineering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Torso

[infinite_jim]

Overrated, overpaid, brandscape that every city in the world wants a piece for their collection.

[Vertigo58]

Poetry in motion.

http

://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...%3Den%26sa%3DN

[infinite_jim]

Poetry in motion.

Are you familiar w/ Cecil Balmond's work?

[Vertigo58]

Are you familiar w/ Cecil Balmond's work?

I did recognize one of his designs. Also very cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Balmond

[editor]

[lockmat]

- 7:39 is ugly

- I do like the sun dial bridge

When they're speaking off-site, showing those models...it just makes me scratch my head. Why is he designing buildings after how humans balance themselves? Besides the fact people will be living and moving inside them, I fail to see the connection. I'm not sure if form is more important than function (maybe they are equally important) but it seems that neither is as important to him (and possibly other architects) as simply the idea or the ability to be as extreme as possible.

And it's interesting to point out that so many people who criticize Houston's new buildings, do so by describing them as boring or ugly, sometimes as cool or awesome but not so much beautiful. So it seems as if people want a extreme looking, cool building. This way of thinking for some reason leads me to think of myself as a kid wanting and liking my hair spiked b/c it's extreme and cool.

*Funny, I wrote the above, but was already on the following website and then found this thread. This person more or less sums up the same idea I was trying to say. What do yall think? (emphasis mine)

I have always been struck by the supposed importance of innovation in architecture. Never mind if the users of the Lloyds building in London would rather work across the street in that old building like they did before, the building is a one-of-a-kind, so it gets all the praise. How does this help the clients? Since romanticism there has been increasing stress on making something different than everything else, and the result is ugly cities like London where all the buildings are screaming for attention and trying not to fit in. They often are failure socially as well. I am frequently told Venice is the most beautiful city in the world. Sure, there is a mild struggle between gothic and classical styles, but compared to any modern city it is incredibly coherent. If the architects of this place stressed innovation and ridiculed any building remotely similar to something already made, it would never have the positive emotional impact it has on people. Creative thinking is of course important, to solve specific problems, but many feel there is by far too much stress on innovation and not enough faith in well-tested methods and traditions when it comes to aesthetics.

There are increasingly many architects and theorists, such as Nikos Salingaros, Christopher Alexander and Alain De Botton who argues very well in their books about this point. They all refer to environmental psychology or sociobiology to explain this. In what way is society served by having nothing but wannabe-landmarks and very different buildings everywhere? It is clear that most non-architects are not especially impressed.

What do you think? Are there any other good authors on this subject? Should the experimental and progressive science have more influence on the built environment, and maybe pseudo-philosophy with big words and empty meaning have less?

http://arch.designcommunity.com/topic-2214...ghlight=houston

[lockmat]

Another quote I agree with from that thread...

Architects today stresses innovation more than beauty when deciding the look of a building. If the building is beautiful but looks like something existing, it is not innovative enough at does not deserve to be published.

I very often hear, when someone talks about architecture, that one structure looks like an other one that already exists - as if that disqualifies it for being worth talking about or looking at.

page 3

and this one...

Back to the subject 'is innovation important in architecture?' my answer would be 'yes, but it doesn't cause greatness in architecture'.

[editor]

You can't go strictly by beauty or innovation -- you need both.

If it weren't for innovation we'd all be living in caves.

If it weren't for beauty, we'd all be living in caves.

[lockmat]

You can't go strictly by beauty or innovation -- you need both.

If it weren't for innovation we'd all be living in caves.

If it weren't for beauty, we'd all be living in caves.

I think I rank beauty higher than innovation.

My real beef is that it seems innovation is what's driving architecture these days. People believe simply because it's innovative that it's great architecture.

I believe you can be innovative and make it beautiful. But if you put innovation as a higher priority (which is what seems is happening), many times all the result is innovation, and not beauty, because frankly, sometimes (many times?) the innovation is out of place and ugly.

Just look at the examples of this guy with those blocks. Do people really believe those are beautiful? Maybe to some, but to the masses? I doubt it. They're very innovative I'll give him that, but beautiful in my opinion, they are not.

[Vertigo58]

Oh my God! I missed this interview.

Hope it repeats.