Santiago Calatrava is a famous architect and engineer known for his innovative bridges and buildings that combine aesthetic beauty with engineering prowess.
Born in Valencia, Spain, in 1951, he earned his architecture degree in 1974 and a Ph.D. in engineering in 1979.
Calatrava founded his architectural firm in 1981 and expanded globally.
He is famous for his distinctive bridge designs, including the Alamillo and Lusitania Bridges, as well as architectural marvels like the Turning Torso and Lyon Airport Railway Station.
Calatrava has faced mixed reviews for his work in New York City, but his unique style and contributions to architecture earned him the AIA Gold Medal in 2005.
His talents also extend to drawing and sculpting, with exhibitions worldwide.
Santiago Calatrava’s most famous works are Milwaukee Art Museum, Turning Torso Tower and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York City.
I have made a list of the best quotes by Santiago Calatrava.
Best Santiago Calatrava Quotes
I’ve never been interested in pure movement or pure stability, but in the unstable. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
The movement of many people through a building can be musical, if the movement is harmonious, rational, but full of life and feeling. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Bridges and stations are very strongly related to the development of a city. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
You have to live with the necessities of other people. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Architecture, like dance, is also a language – one that everybody understands. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
My architecture is very much place-related. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
The world of sculpture precedes by many years the world of architecture. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
What architecture does is what a coat does for our body. It wraps us. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
My goal is always to create something exceptional that enhances cities and enriches the lives of the people who live and work in them. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Bridges join places that were separated. They are built for the sake of progress and for the average citizen. They even have a religious dimension. Even the word ‘religious’ comes from the Latin, meaning ‘creating a link.’ ~ Santiago Calatrava.
I have always tried to create bridges that are more than a connecting structure – places in their own right. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
I understand and accept criticisms of my work, provided they are done with professional criteria and arguments. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
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. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
I just want to build the best buildings. It’s not about me, it’s about the buildings, creating a space where society can gather and marvel in beauty and nature. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Not only did America invent the skyscraper, it invented the skyline. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
The Taj Mahal is a monument to love in all cultures. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Popular Santiago Calatrava Quotes
There is one way that architecture is superior to sculpture, and that is scale. You can walk into a building and have it all around you. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Architecture is a code. It’s a pure code, derived from the dimensions of nature. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
When I work on sculpture, I don’t have to worry about function. When I work on a piece of architecture, I must think about function all the time. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
I don’t see any difference between architecture and engineering. It’s the same profession. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
We’re used to thinking of force as a stable phenomenon, but it has a cinematic variable, which is acceleration. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
I would like to be an artist who works in a very closed ambience. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
I’ve always had a dream about New York. New York is an island… those bridges… the skyline… the dynamism. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Something that has been very important to me in all my projects has been location, the place where they are installed. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
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. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
A new building should deliver a feeling of hope. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
You need to know a lot to become master of your profession. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
New York is not a place that lets you be indifferent. New York is this kind of place that, wherever you go, wherever you move, you are always confronted by your own time. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
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. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Famous Santiago Calatrava Quotes
As an architect, you do not have control of who will build the building and who will have the capability. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
The two most important functional aspects to be fulfilled in a transportation facility are ease of wayfinding and easy orientation. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Some have tried to use my work for politics, using inaccurate or out-of-context information that, repeated enough, becomes truth to some even though it is not. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
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. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Bridges with cables very easily resemble stringed instruments. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
A railway station is something that can generate a city. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Working with artistic people is very special, especially when they are so professional. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
I always considered the role of teaching to be very noble and relevant. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
The reality is that throughout my career I’ve tackled projects in Spain that I’m proud of. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
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. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Architecture is one of the art forms best able to improve and revitalise cities both artistically and functionally. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Top Santiago Calatrava Quotes
The first significant work I did was a railway station in Zurich called Stadelhofen. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
I always admired the U.S. as the country of the space shuttle, of technological achievement. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Chicago is a beautiful city with a wonderful skyline. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
When I found I could not figure something out, I decided to learn about it, until I knew as much as I could. It’s my way. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
A first building is like a first novel, it is always autobiographical. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
You could say that I had become possessed, in the classical sense, by the art of the great architects of the past. And that led me to engineering. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
New York is the city of the 21st century. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
My ambition is to give Oakland’s cathedral a universal character independent of the Catholic Church. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Being an architect is like playing piano, you learn to play to admire how well the other guys play piano. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
I did not want to do stereotypical buildings. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
It is an exceptional event to build a cathedral – it must withstand several lifetimes. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Great Santiago Calatrava Quotes
I have tried to get close to the frontier between architecture and sculpture and to understand architecture as an art. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Many of the architects I admire have given the best of themselves as they mature. I’m hoping to do the same. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Once you put the bridge there, you distinguish it from any other place in the world. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
New York City has a tradition of great stations. There are cities in the world that don’t have that. New York has it. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
If I was not born in this lifetime in New York, certainly in a previous life, I was a New Yorker. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
Architecture is a wrapping for the human body, and dance is the finest expression of the body. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
The idea of spirituality is difficult to discuss. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
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. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
What I do is the opposite of building walls. I build bridges. A bridge is something that connects instead of separating. ~ Santiago Calatrava.
So these were the 63 top quotes about Santiago Calatrava.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Alice Coltrane quotes and Belle Boyd quotes.
