Santiago Calatrava

Santiago Calatrava Valls (born 28 July 1951) is a Spanish architect, structural engineer, sculptor and painter, particularly known for his bridges supported by single leaning pylons, and his railway stations, stadiums, and museums, whose sculptural forms often resemble living organisms. His best-known works include the Olympic Sports Complex of Athens, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Turning Torso tower in Malmö, Sweden, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York City, the Auditorio de Tenerife in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in Dallas, Texas, and his largest project, the City of Arts and Sciences and Opera House in his birthplace, Valencia. His architectural firm has offices in New York City, Doha, and Zürich. Early life Calatrava was born on 28 July 1951, in Benimàmet, an old municipality now part of Valencia, Spain. His Calatrava surname was an old aristocratic one from medieval times, and was once associated with an order of knights in Spain. He had his primary and secondary schooling in Valencia, and, beginning in 1957, studied drawing and painting at the School of Applied Art. In 1964, as the regime of General Francisco Franco relaxed and Spain became more open to the rest of Europe, he went to France as an exchange student. In 1968, after completing secondary school, he went to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, but he arrived in the midst of student uprisings and turmoil in Paris, and returned home. Back in Valencia, he discovered a book about the architecture of Le Corbusier, which persuaded him that he could be both an artist and an architect. He enrolled in the Higher School of Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He received his diploma as an architect and then did higher studies in urbanism. At the University he completed independent projects with fellow students, publishing two books on the vernacular architecture of Valencia and Ibiza. In 1975, he enrolled in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland for a second degree in civil engineering. In 1981, he was awarded a doctorate in the department of architecture, after completing his thesis on "The Pliability of three-dimensional structures." Speaking of this period, Calatrava told biographer Philip Jodildo (AKA Nick Fendt, Jet):"The desire to start all over at zero was very strong in me.