Product Description

Santiago Calatrava is not only one of the world's most prominent architects, but is also an engineer, sculptor, and painter. His reputation as an unparalleled architectural engineer was cemented with his numerous bridges for cities around the world. With recent projects such as the stadium for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and the new railway station in Liege, Belgium, he has unarguably made his name in Europe and continues to look further ahead. His work is closely related to his own drawings of the human body, and to his sculptures of geometric forms, inspired by the dynamics of movement and tension. Winner of the 2005 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the only architect ever to have his work exhibited at both the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Calatrava is one of today's greatest and most innovative architects. This book provides an introduction to and overview of his work to date. Every book in "Taschen's Basic Architecture" series features: approximately 120 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans; introductory essays exploring the architect's life and work, touching on family and background as well as collaborations with other architects; the most important works presented in chronological order, with descriptions of client and/or architect wishes as well as construction problems and resolutions; and an appendix including a list of complete or selected works, biography, bibliography and a map indicating the locations of the architect's most famous buildings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48822 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Philip Jodidio studied art history and economics at Harvard University, and was Editor-in-Chief of the leading French art journal Connaissance des Arts for over two decades. He has published numerous articles and books, including TASCHEN's Architecture Now! series, Building a New Millennium, and monographs on Salgado Calatrava, Norman Foster, Richard Meier, Alvaro Siza, Tadao Ando, and Renzo Piano.

Customer Reviews

The modernity of beauty
Santiago Calatrava is an unusually talented architect. His architectural creations possess an awe inspiring beauty, elegance and purity.

The richly illustrated slim volume had on me an immense aesthetic and emotional impact. The spare text was insightful.

The book comprise an Introduction and the main body with the description of 19 projects illustrated with magnificent photographs but also sketches of the projects along with textual description of the underlying philosophy and guiding principles for each project.

The introduction includes information on the training of the architect comprising Art and Architecture in Spain and a Ph.D degree in civil engineering from the prestigious Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. As the architect explains, his creations emanate from a fusion of his three capacities namely those of the artist, architect and engineer. In an interview he describes his work as an "interwinement of plastic expression and structural revelation, producing results that possibly can be best described as a synthesis of aesthetics and structural Physics."

The architect acknowledges that his taste for simplicity in engineering otiginates from his observation of the work of the Swiss engineer Robert Maillart. With simple forms Maillart showed that it is possible to create a strong content and to elicit an emotional response. But though the architect admires the work of Maillart, still he differentiates his own work and particularly bridges. Maillart's bridges, observes Calatrava, are often set in a beautiful mountain scenery. His achievement was to introduce successfully an artificial element into such magnificent locations. Today, he observes, I believe that one of the important tasks is to reconsider the periphery of cities. Most often public works in such areas are purely functional, and yet even near railroad tracks, or spanning polluted rivers, bridges can have a remarkably positive effect. By creating an appropriate environment, they can have a symbolic impact whose ramifications go far beyond their immediate location. Calatrava's works are uplifting and even in purely fubctional projects such as a railway station or an auditorium he has the ability to add a dimension of spirituality.

Works presented include a number of bridges which constitute something of a signature design of the architect with an elegance bordering on the ethereal belying their underlying solidity; railway sations including the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, New York; Airport Communication Towers; the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee; the Tenerife Auditorium, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; and the Olympic Sport Complex, Athens.