Santiago Calatrava

Born 1951 · Spanish-Swiss · 22 buildings on the wall

Santiago Calatrava (born 1951) is a Spanish-Swiss architect, structural engineer, sculptor and painter, known for bridges held by a single leaning pylon and for stations, museums and concert halls whose forms often recall living creatures. He studied architecture in Valencia and civil engineering at ETH Zurich, where he earned a doctorate in 1981.

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The Alamillo Bridge in Seville (1992), built for Expo 92, hangs its deck from one pylon 142 metres high, leaning at 58 degrees, and made his name. Gare do Oriente in Lisbon (1998), built for that year's World Exposition, raises its platforms 19 metres above the road under a lattice of glass and metal. The Milwaukee Art Museum, Quadracci Pavilion (2001) adds a glass entrance hall to Eero Saarinen's earlier building, with a sun screen of moving steel wings. The Turning Torso in Malmö (2005) was his first skyscraper and the first twisting tower. In Valencia, his City of Arts and Sciences (1998) includes L'Hemisfèric, a half-sunk globe whose screen opens and closes like an eye. Santiago Calatrava's projects are studied for how engineering and sculpture can become one structure.

See the 22 buildings ↓