Renowned architect, artist, sculptor, and engineer Santiago Calatrava will speak about his work and career as part of the School of Architecture’s spring 2010 lecture and events series at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 22, 2010 in Memorial Hall Auditorium on Pratt’s Brooklyn Campus. The lecture is free and open to the public, however seating priority will be given to Pratt students with valid ID at 5:30 p.m. Members of the public will be admitted at 5:50 p.m. should seating be available.
Calatrava, a native of Valencia, Spain, won his first competition proposal in 1983 for the design and construction of Stadelhofen Railway Station in Zurich, the city where he established his first office. Since then, Calatrava has earned an international reputation for the design and construction of over 55 acclaimed bridges, transportation centers, and educational buildings. Among his notable projects are the Bach de Roda Bridge, Barcelona; Tenerife Auditorium, Canary Islands; the Alameda Bridge and Metro Station, Valencia; the expansion of the Milwaukee Art Museum; and the new Liege-Guillemins TGV Railway Station, Belgium, which opened in September 2009.
Calatrava established his firm’s second office in Paris in 1989, when he was working on the Lyon Airport Station, and opened the firm’s third office in Valencia in 1991 to facilitate ongoing work on the City of Arts and Sciences cultural complex. He closed the Paris office in 2003 and opened an office in New York City in 2004 to be closer to a number of important commissions he received in the United States, including the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, New York; three bridges over the Trinity River, Dallas; the expansion of the Denver International Airport; and the first building for the University of South Florida Polytechnic’s new campus, which upon completion will be Calatrava’s first educational complex in the U.S.
Calatrava’s artwork was first exhibited in 1985 with the display of nine sculptures in an art gallery in Zurich. He reached new levels of recognition with solo exhibitions at the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The latter exhibition included an installation in the museum’s sculpture garden of Shadow Machine, a large-scale sculpture with undulating concrete “fingers.” He has also exhibited work in various other international venues including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens; the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; and Es Baluard Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Majorca. Calatrava has received numerous personal and professional honors for his work in architecture. He was named a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 1993; included on TIME Magazine’s “TIME 100” list of the most influential people in 2005; and received the American Institute of Architect’s Gold Medal in recognition of a significant body of work of lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture, also in 2005. He has received 16 honorary doctorates to date and is a permanent honorary guest of the University of Zurich.
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