Detail: You design exceptional structures in various countries. You’re an engineer, an architect and an artist all in one. What is your architectural vision?
Santiago Calatrava: The things I create as a painter or sculptor are an important part of my work. Here in the office, I have a workshop where we make not just architectural models, but sculpture, too. Occasionally, I also design a piece of furniture. In the New York studio, I paint. My work as a painter and sculptor is very personal, but it nevertheless finds expression in my architecture as well. In one of my first projects, a warehouse in Coesfeld-Lette, north Germany, we regarded the various facades as pictures and designed special gates that represent a mechanical sculpture. In later buildings, too, I always tried to incorporate something of my sculpting activities.
Santiago Calatrava: The things I create as a painter or sculptor are an important part of my work. Here in the office, I have a workshop where we make not just architectural models, but sculpture, too. Occasionally, I also design a piece of furniture. In the New York studio, I paint. My work as a painter and sculptor is very personal, but it nevertheless finds expression in my architecture as well. In one of my first projects, a warehouse in Coesfeld-Lette, north Germany, we regarded the various facades as pictures and designed special gates that represent a mechanical sculpture. In later buildings, too, I always tried to incorporate something of my sculpting activities.