Santiago Calatrave

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.