smatterrata:


i wonder what happens to drainage at the valleys at the inflection points of the curve?


the large curvey form looks difficult to visually integrate. but i'd give it a go. fun challenge.

good shots.
http://www.arcspace.com/architects/calatrava/wine/

I like the look of that leaning wall (in the barrel-seating auditorium? :) ). But probably costly.


The pond walls and walk look tacked on. But that entry looks fake (never used, so who cares.)

curve sizing and spacing of roof and wall appear to conform to those of the equipment unit spacing.

Beams and wood of roof are boxed in to protect from weather.

Wow. Saying Calitrava is a no good architect is like saying Karim Rashid is a bad industrial designer, or Libeskind is a no good architect. All three are at the top of their field, moving the world forward building by building, or object by object in the case of Karim Rashid. All of you are just trying to be contrarian. Calitrava is awesome and there is no denying it.

BOTS, i was refering to some of the comments by people in this thread, friends who have experienced his buildings, and a friend who works in one. i'll be the first to admit, my comments are probably similar to a democrat who says they don't know anyone who would vote for bush. most of us tend to gravitate towards like minded people.

sam sung, i think most here are just expressing personal preferences just as you are. he is obviously an accomplished designer. whether you like his work or not is a matter of ones own taste.

that said, i agree with most in saying his bridges are sweet, and i find his tower for nyc interesting. i just don't like the broken record he keeps pushing.

sam sung

i am sorry that you have to be so non-crititcal when it comes to santiago. i feel your blurb on karim, libeskind and calatrava to be pedestrian... why are they so good??? one who says that libeskind is great MUST state WHY he is so great, lest you be taken as following the media instead of forming your own value judgements...

i will protest your acknowledgement by stating that libeskind and calatrava have both fallen prey to their own aesthetic. libeskind should be ashamed to keep stamping off the jewish museum's dark concepts on all other varieties of projects he participates in (see denver art museum)... he and santiago both are way too talented to be whores of their own making.

before you champion someone on these threads, please do your research...

All these posts about Calatrava being a nice guy . . . I went to the unveiling last night and afterwards, I almost hit him in my car. When the light turned green, I started going and a car turned left in front of me. Sure enough, it was a confused and befuddled Santiago Calatrava cutting me off. All the passengers in the car didn't believe me when I told them, and I doubt anyone on this board will believe my story, but its true, he's a horrible driver!

'wonder what happens to drainage at the valleys at the inflection points of the curve?'

I thought the rain would drain to either side of the infex and drain before reaching the eave through a downpipe located at the wall junction – can quite recall the detail, it’s based on my extensive knowledge of rain though!

e - I take your point as i have never visited his buildings (or know of anyone that has) as for record, broken or otherwise try:

Zaha
Mies
Gaudi
gehry

The question should be whether having a defining style that identifies a particular architect’s work is a positive thing. Aren’t we are surrounded by enough homogenous dross?

can't quite recall the detail

you are right BOTS. homogeneity is all around us. there was a book i heard someone talking about a while back. i wish i could remember the name of it. the book was about how great people reinvent themselves on average of every 7 years. it cited gandhi, picasso, ahem, madonna, and others. gehry used to reinvent himself, but it's been a while for him. anyone know of it?

drainage.

i was thinking of the valleys that are very close to horizontal (assuming the beams are straight) those ridges (seams) or vallyes are at the inflectoins of the overall curve. maybe the valley/seams are spaced so that valleys never coincide with exact horizontal part of curve?

drainage - mmm you got me thinking now, where's that AR

i'm really tempted to say that i distrust his validity as an architect because of his "broken record" mode, ie, making seemingly similar buildings on entirely different sites. however...

personally, i can see real consistency in the work of many architects and firms, not only in the ones that are overtly formal about it. many of you critics here discount calatrava because of his apparently form-driven approach to creating architecture. however, aren't you afraid that you, in your critiques, are placing too much emphasis on form as well?

the point is this: i have not sat down and studied the floor plans of calatrava's latest and greatest, and i'll be damned if even a few of you here have either. the statement made in the very first post of this thread:

[[it is through criticism... that we find our true creative genius.]]

can be very powerful if understood; by carefully studying a condition we can understand its merits and shortcomings. by even more carefully studying a condition, we can hope to pose solutions to its shortcomings. most of you here have formed adamant, even zealous opinions of this man's work, yet are being entirely uncritical in both your adulation and scorn; you either pledge to hate his formalism or love his formalism. but is that really all there is to his work? unlikely, says i.

i am surprised that comparisons to gehry have stood for as long as they have in this thread. in a very obvious sense, they are completely opposite one another: calatrava derives his forms from structural principles, whereas gehry makes forms out of any old thing laying around (towels, aluminum foil, etc.) and then uses catia to calculate how many nuts, bolts and plates he needs to hold the circus of steelwork together. and yet, even within this broad difference, there is no call for side-taking or name-calling, as neither calatrava's nor gehry's work cannot be adequately "summed-up" by glancing at their forms.

the issue of context has become much more complex than many of you would like to admit. indeed, can it not be argued that, in this age of instant-information which has hyperbolized the significance of imagery and consumption, the actions of influential architects have a significant global impact, yet only at an aesthetic level? the existence of the internet has significantly changed any real notion of contextuality. image, regardless of its geographic origin, is consumed and assimilated. the battle for dominance in aesthetic globalization is underway. Yet this is not a battle, i think, that architects mean to take part in.

the work of an architect is much more precious and faceted than any enthusiast's formalistic reduction of it can ever give it credit for. just because your mom and your next-door neighbor love calatrava for his forms doesn't mean that that is the only possible reason you can ever like him. the same goes for disliking him. image is certainly important in architecture, but, as architects, i think we should take more seriously our roles as true critics and supporters of the depth and significance of what it is we contribute to the world, and stop making the purely image-based pseudo-critiques that our moms and neighbors make.

it's the zeitgeist of the moment. we currently live at the aesthetic level. As Architects we may be above such pseudo-critiques but our clients / planners are often not.

my point, bots, is that if we as architect succumb to the aestheticization of everything around us, who can we expect to resist it?

most of calatrava's detractors here aim their critiques solely at the the consistent image of his architecture, yet by making such narrow statements they themselves buy into the limiting dialectic that aestheticization nourishes (pretty=good/ugly=bad), even if they think that they are subverting it by making the opposite claim, that calatrava's work, because it is consistently perceived as "beautiful," is somehow necessarily non-rigorous (bad, in archi-speak).

i know that our clients/planners buy into imagery, and that's why they have been demanding calatrava and gehry of late. calatrava and gehry have cleverly taken advantage of this situation by developing extremely compelling and consistent formal languages, making themselves brand names. it is important for us to not discount the significance of what these and other star architects are doing by simply labeling them "formalists" or "non-contextual"; there is more subtlety in both their work and the global social, political and economic contexts they were built in.

which brings me back to the main point: if people on an architecture discussion forum can't look beyond the image of architecture, we can't blame architects for making use of strong, consistent imagery, much less hope that ANYONE will ever appreciate any type of design on anything other than aesthetic terms.

Calatrava these days (as opposed in earlier work) is producing rubber-stamped a-spatial spectacles -- plain and simple. They're fetishized, largely symmetrical monumental objects, with practically zero spatio-programmatic complexity. Kind of like a zoomorphic version of Mario Bota -- literal, formulaic, heavy-handed, sentimental, overly-symbolic crap! Actually if the Calatrava's parking garage in Atlanta is as nice as Milwaukee's that'll once again be the buildings most compelling piece).
It amazes me there are architects, young or old, that buy into this image-driven hogwash; particularly ones presumably educated in critical space-making. When architecture is 'wysiwyg' from 1000' away, where's the mystery? anticipation? perceptual complexity? enticingly choreagraphed movement of people through space (vs. the movement of dumbass metaphorical giant 'bird wings')?
I agree Libeskind/Gehry's latest work has some of the same formulism (not formalism), but at least the experience of their work is engaging beyond mere symbolism, i.e. spatially (Libeskind's Ground Zero and Manchester War Museum not included -- they're as bad as Calatrava). As a professor of mine once said, for Architecture to be really great, there must be some kind of predicament that it finds itself in, i.e. it must challenge our perception of it in some way, and ultimately beckon us back for further investigation. Gehry certainly has an understanding of this, not Calatrava (unless you're claiming the 'bird wings' opening will do that -- 'ooh, look at the bird wings open!')...

for me critiquing Calatrava's body of work is not an aesthetic exercise... in fact i do think his forms are quite "aesthetically beautiful" (whether this matters or not is a different discussion). my issue is not that: 'the FORM is the same', and more that: 'the form is the SAME'.

the statue of David is beautiful, but michaelangelo didn't make 5 or 6 of them, so i don't think you can justify Calatrava as being a sculptor...

again this is all completely apart from the argument that aesthetics are completely irrelevant in architecture or art or sculpture. personally, i prefer to understand aesthetics from it's greek root - aisthtikos, of sense perception... which is much more interesting than whether something is pretty or not...

Yes, perhaps Calatrava just sucks when you look at nature and its wonders and see the feeble human attempting form and grace.

But Calatrava's forms are beautiful and Gehry's are horrid. I am intrigued by Calatrava and not by Gehry.

So Calatrava is a one liner? He made a product and now he's selling it. Like fine art. It is sought out by someone.

I think his building images are all unique and they take my breath away. I like to trace my eye along the lines and the shades and shadows. I visited his buildings and No problem. Just movement and life. They are like Georgia O'Keefe's.

Is the Eiffel Tower beautiful then?

for the record:

- calatrava doesn't have a driver's license
- calatrava is not a nice man (is any successful architect a nice person?)
- if most non-architects like his buildings and most architects hate his buildings who do you think he rather please?

in answer points 1 & 2 .... so what!
point 3 - he would rather please his client

With so much banal architecture out there, I am surprised that we still choose to criticize the likes of Calatrava, Gehry and others.
Maybe we should start rewarding strength in architectural design, regardless of our personal taste???
Then again, if we quit complaining, we wouldn't be architects, right!?

I dont' know, I'd put my money on most architects liking his work. Everyone I've every talked to about him, loved and admired his work, including those at the firms I've been at.

I agree a lot of his work has a signature, but that's fine with me (ok, maybe a little too similar recently). But it's all too easy to criticize those that take formal risks, especially those that have an intuitive sculptural talent (I can't say I love Gehry as a sculpture artist, but I do love the fact that he builds what he wants).

It's easy to make boxes work and function, not so easy when you are making aggressive formal moves.

I think its funny how people love to bash Gehry on this forum, but seem to love and admire calatrave. They are both sculptor's with a signagture style. I think its amazing that both of these guys are able to pull off these projects, but that shouldn't make them immune from criticism. I still think the ASC is a dog despite the aggressive formal moves.

These signature architects are popular because the current fad in architecture is for iconic buildings with a ‘wow’ factor. Like any fashion movement it won’t stand the test of time unless it resists redevelopment and can become retro (like rennaisanse).

On a side note Selfridges by future systems in Birmingham is signature architecture and an iconic building in an otherwise banal urban environment. Shame it’s a fucking dog, don’t get me started.

First of all, the fact that Calatrava doesn't have a driver's license obviously explains the boneheaded move he made after the unveiling. I'm taking this one with me to the grave!

Second, I think this structure is, as the governor unknowingly said, "an appropriate structure for Atlanta." Atlanta is a "me too" city, so when they saw that Time magazine voted the Milwaukee museum the best architecture of the year, Atlanta decided they wanted one of those too. Never mind the fact that the site on 14th street doesn't really call for a sculptural form. It is a very small site for what Calatrava is anticipating, and that approach through the trees from Peachtree street will rarely be experienced since it is not on an established pedestrian route. The typical pedestrian approach will be the somewhat less graceful approach from the side which is represented later in the animation.

But I don't dislike the ASO Hall. Its entirely what I expected, although it seems to be a crude amalgamation of the Milwaukee museum and the project in Tenerife. But I am much more intrigued by Calatrava's alien/biomorphic forms than by Gehry's crumpled up balls of paper forms. I think it's a positive step for a city that has typically created second or third rate monuments, but I don't think it will make it into the category of a first rate monument.

Somewhat less publicized is Renzo Piano's addition to the High Museum. Does anyone know where one can find information on that?

just today got the first glance of the ASC and from the initial image I would agree with most on this thread on it's shortfalls, although alot of what's been said so far has been a sort of repetitive criticism of contemporary practices in general -seduction of imagery, uncritical reactionary type statements, reductive comparisons (gehry-calatrava as sculptors), etc.
But why should I hate Caltrava's buildings and think he sucks?
I've visited some of his bridges in spain & france and frankly find them to be inspirational and at times sublime. his TGV train station outside of Lyon is not an exhibition of structural rationalism but definitely a far cry from simply a 'zoomorphic metaphor' or a 'signature style'.
my reading of most of his work derives from his early research into movable/deployable structures during his thesis at the ETH which evolved into a fascination/obsession with the Greek and later renaissance exploration of contrapposto.

I'd be tempted to conceed that Foster is better at bridge design than Calatrava is at building design.

Millau Viaduct, France

i'm partial to foster, but that millennium bridge snafu?

they should have kept the wobble. typical health and safety crap, there was no danger.

evryone knows it as the wobbly bridge despite the fact they corrected the ressonance.

whoops, big one , sorry duddes

/I like him, but this ...........

he's no swiss watch, thats for sure

Hey kc,
Maybe Calatrava was just trying to fit in with all the other Atlanta drivers. I am one of few who walks this city on a regular basis and people almost run me over ALL the time.

As far as the approach from Peachtree, the animation is way over exaggerated. I sit directly across the street from where that entrance will be and it will not be what is proposed.

Check the RPBW site for info on the high expansion, or maybe high.org

don't know much about his WTC transport interchange but as a landmark public node it the business - visually... although I am buying into the limiting dialectic that aestheticization nourishes...

they really are spectaculare, his structures. but does he have to turn them into buildings just because they are hard to do? is there any other justification to this spectacle beside of 'look what i can do'? in my humile opinion they are too much of a structure for a building. but then again, it is only my opinion.

kakacabeza,
this website should help:
building the high

good seeing you the other nite at the unveiling...here's all i will say about it:
it was indeed painful to watch the governor and suits talk about this project...and yes, the design is reminiscient of his other previous projects, but the one thing i was captivated by was the performance hall itself. one thing this thread (and archinect in general) has taught me is how formalist people are, even when they deny it. i'm often guilty of this myself, but the point is that there's more to a building than it's form. and in the case of the ASO, the performance hall looked remarkable...and if it gets built according to plan, it will be a somewhat revolutionary addition to the research and into acoustically "tunable" rooms.

but i agree w/ kakacabeza about the siting.

Been to the museum in Milwaukee and it's breathtaking. I felt like I was in Star Wars.

Spectacular! Breathtaking! Sublime! Sophisticated! Revolutionary! What more can I say!

He's a fucking pastry chef that works in concrete.

i'm going to have to amend my comments above after seeing the model today: that atlanta symphony hall is just awful. it's beyond a caricature.

don't get me wrong, the guy has done some brilliant work, both the 'engineering' work and the more 'architectural' stuff, but this one isn't going to go down as his finest hour.

your photo is visually reminiscent of


and the 'sleeves'


and,
palms on the deck..

are those stairs really as steep as they look in the photo?

who maintains the white paint on the shade structure? is that paint?

in general, calatrava photos on the net
he likes ribs
huge
messy/busy

the la devesa asymmetry is interesting

his stuff seems quite nice to me...

We needed Santiago here, in Atlanta, back in '96. Great Olympics, terrible Olympic Architecture. Oh well, at least Athens got him.

i don't like his work. at all really. i actually quite dis-like his work. greatly.
however, i appreciate that he provides a somewhat unique style among 'respected' contemporary architects.
speaking of which, his winning the gold medal recently is just ridiculous to me. but i suppose they had to give it someone, and as usual, it wasn't based on quality of work, but on general popularity and publicity.

I love his stuff. I think it's inspiring and experimental. It occupies a certain formal niche that, as we can all see, you either appreciate or you don't.

And I think it's assanine to say that "we don't want an engineer pushing his way into our field". More architects should have his level of understanding about the role that structure plays in a building.

i like calatravas work, but like all celebrities he is a victim of his own image. just like fabio has his hair, so does calatrava has his "stamp".

i really didn't like the atlanta music hall, it looks like a collection of his "stamped" elements.

but his early work is good..

i guess familiarity breeds contempt.

e909..been on that bridge in bilbao..and i've seen
his train station in zumichon...his all white buildings may
not be all that nice..but zumichon is really nice and the
bridge and it's connections are really nice. the only thing
people complained about re: the bilbao bridge is that it's
glass and when it rains it's slippery as hell..and it rains a
bunch. i think his buildings may leave something to be
desired..but i question those that would claim he isn't a
visionary and deserving of awards. he's a unique entity in
a profession where it is difficult to be truly unique.

i for one would like to work with just one engineer with his
creative ability...i don't know how many times i've been told
that something isn't possible when the truth was 'i'm afraid
to think outside the box or my asci steel manual'...

Love his work!!

I wouldn't say his buildings suck, but his bridges are definitely better.