Santiago Calatrava

Santiago Calatrava (born 1951) is a Spanish architect and structural engineer, born in Valencia. He studied architecture at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and civil engineering at ETH Zurich, where he completed a doctorate in 1981 on foldable three-dimensional structures. He opened his office in Zurich the same year.

He designs bridges, stations and museums in white-painted steel and concrete, with exposed ribs, arches and leaning masts, and several have moving parts. Early works include Stadelhofen station in Zurich (1990), the Alamillo Bridge in Seville (1992), whose deck hangs from a single pylon leaning at 58 degrees, and the station at Lyon-Saint-Exupéry Airport (1994). The Oriente station in Lisbon (1998) has a platform roof of steel and glass on branching columns. The Quadracci Pavilion of the Milwaukee Art Museum (2001) has a 115-tonne sunscreen of steel fins that opens and closes.

His largest project is the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, a group of museums, a planetarium and an opera house that opened in stages from 1998. The Turning Torso in Malmö, Sweden (2005), is a residential tower of nine segments that turns 90 degrees from bottom to top. The World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York, known as the Oculus (2016), opened years late at a cost of about $4 billion, and several of his projects have led to cost disputes and lawsuits.