City of Science Museum and Planetarium, at Valencia, Spain

Santiago Calatrava Architect and Engineer

Santiago Calatrava

(b. Valencia, Spain 1951)

Santiago Calatrava was born in Valencia, Spain in 1951. He graduated from the Institute of Architecture in Valencia and from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Calatrava opened his own architecture and engineering office in Zurich. Most of his early realized work was in Switzerland and Spain, where he has exhibited his designs and won several awards.

As both an architect and an engineer, Calatrava easily identifies with both disciplines. He often creates innovative works that depend on a firm grasp of both the creative and structural aspects of design. His skills as an engineer allow him to create sculptural surfaces and unusual spaces.

Calatrava avoids the apathetic acceptance of established forms. In 1979 he won the Auguste Perret award for rekindling the quality of Perret's structural work and for re-emphasizing the importance of primary structure in defining form.

Despite an influential presence within the European architectural community, Calatrava has rarely designed a totally enclosed building. Rather, most of his creations are open structures.

References
Peter Cook and Rosie Llewellyn-Jones. New Spirit in Architecture. New York: Rizzoli International, 1991. ISBN 0-8478-1263-4. NA680.C65.

Brasilia Cathedral, Brasilia, Brazil ( Oscar Niemeyer)

Interior, Brasilia Cathedral, Brasilia, Brazil

Oscar Niemeyer Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureates 1988

Oscar Niemeyer was born in the hillside district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and has lived and worked in that area ever since, with occasional forays to France and Italy.

As a student working in the office of Lucio Costa, a prominent architect, he was assigned to work on the plans of the Ministry of Public Instruction designed by the famous French architect Le Corbusier.

It was while working on this project that he met the mayor of Brazil's wealthiest central state, Juscelino Kubitschek, who would later become President of Brazil. As President, he appointed Niemeyer to be the chief architect of Brasilia, a project which occupied all of his time for many years.

Among his other world projects, he collaborated with Le Corbusier again on the design for the United Nations Headquarters in New York. His own residence in Rio de Janeiro has become a landmark. In the 1950's, he designed an Aeronautical Research Center near Sao Paulo. In Europe, he did an office building for Renault and the Communist Party Headquarters both in Paris, a cultural centre for Le Havre, and in Italy, the Mondadori Editorial Office in Milan and the FATA Office Building in Turin. In Algiers, he designed the Zoological Gardens, the University of Constantine, and the Foreign Office.

Although semi-retired, he still works at the drawing board and welcomes young architects from all over the world. He hopes to instill in them the sensitivity to aesthetics that allowed him to strive for beauty in the manipulation of architectural forms.

"I have always," says Niemeyer, "accepted and respected all other schools of architecture, from the chill and elemental structures of Mies van der Rohe to the imagination and delirium of Gaudi. I must design what pleases me in a way that is naturally linked to my roots and the country of my origin.

"As an architect," he continues, "my concern in Brasilia was to find a structural solution that would characterize the city's architecture. So I did my very best in the structures, trying to make them different with their columns narrow, so narrow that the palaces would seem to barely touch the ground. And I set them apart from the facades, creating an empty space through which, as I bent over my work table, I could see myself walking, imagining their forms and the different resulting points of view they would provoke.

"When I started to design the Museum of Modern Art for Niteroi, I already had an idea in mind. An abstract circular form above the landscape, and the site free of other constructions to better emphasize the building.

"I did not want to repeat the usual solutions of a cylinder above another, but to move in the direction of the design for the Caracas Museum, creating a line which would rise with curves and straight lines from the ground up to the roof.

"The exhibition hall would be surrounded by straight walls —I did not want it glazed — but with exits for the external gallery which would encircle it, integrating it in the magnificent panorama.

"As it often happens this solution calling for a central support sustaining only the exhibition room was modified. With the addition of one meter in height on the radial beams, measuring one meter and a half, we would add a new floor, including the 'foyer,' the reception room, the auditorium, work rooms, library and bathrooms. This would result in a more complete and economical project.

"My architecture followed the old examples. The beauty prevailing over the limitations of the constructive logic. My work proceeded, indifferent to the unavoidable criticism set forth by those who take the trouble to examine the minimum details, so very true of what mediocrity is capable of.

"It was enough to think of Le Corbusier saying to me once while standing on the ramp of the Congress: `There is invention here'."

ANGELS BRIDGE AND ST. PETER'S BASILICA, AT NIGHT

The interior of St. Peter's Basilica