What I do is the opposite of building walls. I build bridges. A bridge is something that connects instead of separating.
Santiago Calatrava
My personality is more the personality of a painter.
Chicago is a beautiful city with a wonderful skyline.
We're used to thinking of force as a stable phenomenon, but it has a cinematic variable, which is acceleration.
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.
Not only did America invent the skyscraper, it invented the skyline.
I would like to be an artist who works in a very closed ambience.
I have tried to get close to the frontier between architecture and sculpture and to understand architecture as an art.
A railway station is something that can generate a city.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Because of the nature of the profession of architecture, the art of architecture nourishes itself from other disciplines.
As an architect, you do not have control of who will build the building and who will have the capability.
Architecture, like dance, is also a language - one that everybody understands.
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.
Architecture is one of the art forms best able to improve and revitalise cities both artistically and functionally.
Being an architect is like playing piano, you learn to play to admire how well the other guys play piano.
Architecture is a code. It's a pure code, derived from the dimensions of nature.
A new building should deliver a feeling of hope.
In the 19th and 20th centuries we saw nature as something to use to our profit, but the attitude of man towards nature in the 21st century will be a bit different.
I think it is important to build for people, and to deliver this message of hope: through good construction and a certain sense of progression, a better understanding of each other can be achieved.
I remember, many years ago, coming over the Brooklyn Bridge in the night and seeing the skyline of Manhattan, with the Twin Towers. This was, for me, a kind of religious experience.
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.
It is very important to visit the Oculus at a moment in which the skylight is open. Through the enormous 240′ x 20′ opening, we are framing a piece of Manhattan's sky.
My goal is always to create something exceptional that enhances cities and enriches the lives of the people who live and work in them.
The Taj Mahal is a monument to love in all cultures.
Working with artistic people is very special, especially when they are so professional.
The two most important functional aspects to be fulfilled in a transportation facility are ease of wayfinding and easy orientation.
I always considered the role of teaching to be very noble and relevant.
You must understand the difference between being an architect and a politician. Architecture is a profession of perseverance. You have to come through. The politician is there to blame someone.
I understand and accept criticisms of my work, provided they are done with professional criteria and arguments.
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.
Think about what happens when architecture becomes ruins. All you have left are some little columns on a cliff, but it's still such an overwhelming experience that you could say architecture is that which makes ruins beautiful.
I have always tried to create bridges that are more than a connecting structure - places in their own right.
Airports need an identity, a main hall that defines the dignity of the space and allows people to move fluidly throughout its ancillary parts.
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.
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.
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.
It is an exceptional event to build a cathedral - it must withstand several lifetimes.
What architecture does is what a coat does for our body. It wraps us.
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.
The Freedom Tower has a cost overrun. A significant cost overrun.
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.
My private work is touched by this destiny of understanding that architecture and engineering have a social character and can serve the community.
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.
I always admired the U.S. as the country of the space shuttle, of technological achievement.
The reality is that throughout my career I've tackled projects in Spain that I'm proud of.
