Santiago Calatrava: The Poetics of Movement (Architecture/Design Series)

Santiago Calatrava offers in his numerous buildings, engineering projects, sculptures and furniture designs, a cultural vision that unifies art, science and technology. This work presents the Spanish architect's oeuvre and ideas in the context of contemporary architecture and society. His demanding technical projects are shown to spark off highly abstract sculptural essays, which in turn serve as a research laboratory for the development of innovative engineering. After tracing the roots of Calatrava's design in Spanish traditions and 20th-century intellectual struggles, the author focuses on the development of major infrastructure projects and urban complexes where pragmatic efficiency and technical rationality are combined with engineering and aesthetics. The book discusses approximately 25 projects, including his most recent work, fully documented with photographs, drawings and sketches. Calatrava's work can be interpreted as a paradigm for contemporary design: this book shows that to achieve more integrated cities and landscapes, current boundaries between art, architecture and engineering must be blurred. "Very few designers in this century - a century dominated by specialization and fragmentation - can be called universal, but Santiago Calatrava is one of these few. In his numerous buildings, engineering projects, sculptures, and furniture designs, this Spanish architect whose practice is based in Switzerland has developed a unique poetics of morphology that overlaps structure and movement."--BOOK JACKET. "The book features thirty-five projects, fully documented with photographs, drawings, and sketches. Included are Calatrava's most recent works - the Milwaukee Art Museum Addition and the Orient Station in Lisbon - and his best known, from the Montjuie Tower to the Alameda Bridge."--BOOK JACKET. A study of the oeuvre and ideas of Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava. After tracing the roots of Calatrava's design in Spanish traditions and 20th-century intellectual struggles, the book discusses approximately 25 projects, which are documented with photographs, drawings and sketches A study of the oeuvre and ideas of Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava. After tracing the roots of Calatrava's design in Spanish traditions and 20th-century intellectual struggles, the author discusses 25 projects, which are documented with photographs, drawings and sketches.