The city of Rio de Janeiro is setting an example to the world of how to recover quality urban spaces through drastic intervention and the creation of cultural facilities such as the Museum of Tomorrow.
— Santiago Calatrava
The Huashan project is a clear example of how an urban element, key to the successful growth of the city, can at the same time improve the quality of life for its citizens, thanks to an integration of all three bridges and the creation of boulevards on the banks of the canal.
There is one way that architecture is superior to sculpture, and that is scale. You can walk into a building and have it all around you.
I have built already seven very large railway stations: one in Italy; two in Belgium; and in France, and in Switzerland, in Portugal, and also in the United States. And what happens is that stations are not things that come from one day to another, it takes many years.
Something that has been every important to me in all my projects has been location, the place where they are installed.
As a student I travelled around the Mediterranean - the Greek islands and Salerno on the south coast of Italy.
You need to know a lot to become master of your profession.
You could say that I had become possessed, in the classical sense, by the art of the great architects of the past. And that led me to engineering.
Like Grand Central Station, which is a marvelous building, the design and engineering of the Oculus will endure for many generations to come.
In my opinion, as an engineer, a bridge is the most difficult thing you can do. You are not working in the direction of gravity but against it - so the problem opposes the solution.
For the first project I did in North America, I was asked as an artist, not as an architect, to collaborate on a big development in the heart of Toronto. I was working with other artists and was in charge of giving form to a street, and I proposed a galleria.
Some have tried to use my work for politics, using inaccurate or out-of-context information that, repeated enough, becomes truth to some even though it is not.
The reality is that throughout my career I've tackled projects in Spain that I'm proud of.
My goal is always to create something exceptional that enhances cities and enriches the lives of the people who live and work in them.
For people of the younger generation, the 21st century has started for them with a positive sign that Valencia is and will continue to be a very modern city.
A bridge is born of necessity, but it must establish its own identity. It should harmonize with its surroundings, and the design must transcend the purely local and transform the setting.
The Freedom Tower has a cost overrun. A significant cost overrun.
My closest partner and the person I have been working with for 35 years has been my wife. She not only supported me and helped me but also framed my life.
Architecture is one of the art forms best able to improve and revitalise cities both artistically and functionally.
When I work on sculpture, I don't have to worry about function. When I work on a piece of architecture, I must think about function all the time.
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is for the community of San Francisco. And the Brooklyn Bridge, which is one of the most magnificent bridges ever built, is also a monument to the community, you see.
Being an architect is like playing piano, you learn to play to admire how well the other guys play piano.
I visited Notre Dame at 11 in the morning and the sun was entering through the south rose window, it was so impressive. This is when architecture can be king and give people sensations, like music.
Imagine for a second that the Golden Gate had not been built. This place in the San Francisco Bay would be one of the many beautiful places along the Pacific Coast - but that's all. Once you put the bridge there, you distinguish it from any other place in the world.
When I was in architecture school, I became curious about the exact mathematics, physics, and construction of the great structures I had been studying. I wanted to know how these amazing things would work: the Pantheon, the dome of Michelangelo, the dome of Brunelleschi. So I decided to study civil engineering.
You have to live with the necessities of other people.
A first building is like a first novel, it is always autobiographical.
The first significant work I did was a railway station in Zurich called Stadelhofen.
Many of the architects I admire have given the best of themselves as they mature. I'm hoping to do the same.
As an architect, you do not have control of who will build the building and who will have the capability.
I became a fanatic of the architecture of Le Corbusier and I visited almost all his buildings and read all his books. Only later on did I discover that all the things that impressed me in his books, particular his ideology, he had picked up from Auguste Perret.
Valencia is a pure Mediterranean city; it is a city like Naples or Palermo, like Rome a little bit. Walking in the old town has a little bit of the flavor of the old city of Rome.
My private work is touched by this destiny of understanding that architecture and engineering have a social character and can serve the community.
There is so much vulgarity in the everyday, that when somebody has the pretension to do something extraordinary for the community, then you have to suffer.
Women are the salt of our lives. They give it flavour.
Something that's very important is to preserve the sense of surprise, the sense of discovery. The eye of the person you are talking to, your shadow on the ground. It's important not to get suffocated by all the things in life and lose that sense of surprise.
The world of sculpture precedes by many years the world of architecture.
A new building should deliver a feeling of hope.
When I moved to Switzerland to study at ETH Zurich I became fascinated by Swiss architecture.
The architect works for so many years building it, and the moment you deliver it to the people is the moment when you are unnecessary.
Bridges represent archetypal problems. They are artifacts that bring you across or around an obstacle. So they have an unbelievable force.
I like the word monument, because the word monument is a Latin word.
A railway station is something that can generate a city.
I always considered the role of teaching to be very noble and relevant.
Because of the nature of the profession of architecture, the art of architecture nourishes itself from other disciplines.
I understand and accept criticisms of my work, provided they are done with professional criteria and arguments.
I always admired the U.S. as the country of the space shuttle, of technological achievement.
The bones of my architecture are very much related to the structure, to the physical fact of how a building can stand up; it's also related to geometry and a certain understanding of the architecture in which there is a balance between expression and function.
Building a bridge, in my opinion, is a symbolic gesture, linked with the needs of people who cross over it, and with the idea of overcoming or surmounting obstacles. A modern bridge can also be a work of art. It helps to shape our daily lives and becomes a vital experience for all the people who use it.
I am an engineer, not just an architect, so I've always been motivated by technique or technology. As soon as technology moves just a little bit, it changes architecture.
