Santiago Calatrava
Architect
1951-07-28
Quotes by Santiago Calatrava
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I always admired the U.S. as the country of the space shuttle, of technological achievement.
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The idea of spirituality is difficult to discuss.
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The first significant work I did was a railway station in Zurich called Stadelhofen.
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A railway station is something that can generate a city.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Bridges represent archetypal problems. They are artifacts that bring you across or around an obstacle. So they have an unbelievable force.
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Architecture, like dance, is also a language - one that everybody understands.
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I've never been interested in pure movement or pure stability, but in the unstable.
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We're used to thinking of force as a stable phenomenon, but it has a cinematic variable, which is acceleration.
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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.
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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.
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What I do is the opposite of building walls. I build bridges. A bridge is something that connects instead of separating.
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Architecture is a wrapping for the human body, and dance is the finest expression of the body.
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