Top 123 Quotes & Sayings by Santiago Calatrava - Page 2

The Huashan project is a clear example of how an urban element, key to the successful growth of the city, can at the same time improve the quality of life for its citizens, thanks to an integration of all three bridges and the creation of boulevards on the banks of the canal.

The city of Rio de Janeiro is setting an example to the world of how to recover quality urban spaces through drastic intervention and the creation of cultural facilities such as the Museum of Tomorrow.

There is a change in the view about how condominiums are designed. People used to make prototype apartments and reproduce these boxes hundreds and even thousands of times, and then ask people to conform.

New York is the city of the 21st century.

When I moved to Switzerland to study at ETH Zurich I became fascinated by Swiss architecture.

Chicago is a beautiful city with a wonderful skyline.

It is very important to visit the Oculus at a moment in which the skylight is open. Through the enormous 240? x 20? opening, we are framing a piece of Manhattan's sky.

The function of arts centers goes far beyond being places for performance. They might not be explicitly religious, but they are civic and social spaces.

The best is to go into a train station that I've built and buy a ticket. The guy in the ticket booth might recognize me, which is a marvelous feeling, but it might be that he doesn't and I go in like any other passenger, except that I enter with a critical eye, looking to see how it's held up.

Bridges and stations are very strongly related to the development of a city.

The architect works for so many years building it, and the moment you deliver it to the people is the moment when you are unnecessary.

We're used to thinking of force as a stable phenomenon, but it has a cinematic variable, which is acceleration.

As a student I travelled around the Mediterranean - the Greek islands and Salerno on the south coast of Italy.

Think about what happens when architecture becomes ruins. All you have left are some little columns on a cliff, but it's still such an overwhelming experience that you could say architecture is that which makes ruins beautiful.

Many architects say that they will never do a bridge. But I think they will discover that just as Fallingwater is a piece of art, so Golden Gate is a piece of art of the 20th century.

My closest partner and the person I have been working with for 35 years has been my wife. She not only supported me and helped me but also framed my life.

I have always tried to create bridges that are more than a connecting structure - places in their own right.

I paint and work as a sculptor, and I see architecture as an art... If you follow this approach you can use techniques to the service of man and to the service of an artistic idea, and beauty.

Something that has been every important to me in all my projects has been location, the place where they are installed.

Airports need an identity, a main hall that defines the dignity of the space and allows people to move fluidly throughout its ancillary parts.

There is one way that architecture is superior to sculpture, and that is scale. You can walk into a building and have it all around you.

Something that's very important is to preserve the sense of surprise, the sense of discovery. The eye of the person you are talking to, your shadow on the ground. It's important not to get suffocated by all the things in life and lose that sense of surprise.

It is an exceptional event to build a cathedral - it must withstand several lifetimes.

When I found I could not figure something out, I decided to learn about it, until I knew as much as I could. It's my way.

Bridges join places that were separated. They are built for the sake of progress and for the average citizen. They even have a religious dimension. Even the word 'religious' comes from the Latin, meaning 'creating a link.'

New York is not a place that lets you be indifferent. New York is this kind of place that, wherever you go, wherever you move, you are always confronted by your own time.

New York City has a tradition of great stations. There are cities in the world that don't have that. New York has it.

I don't see any difference between architecture and engineering. It's the same profession.

Rio de Janeiro has captured my imagination.

I don't go running after publicity.

In the 19th and 20th centuries we saw nature as something to use to our profit, but the attitude of man towards nature in the 21st century will be a bit different.

My ambition is to give Oakland's cathedral a universal character independent of the Catholic Church.

I remember, many years ago, coming over the Brooklyn Bridge in the night and seeing the skyline of Manhattan, with the Twin Towers. This was, for me, a kind of religious experience.

I have built already seven very large railway stations: one in Italy; two in Belgium; and in France, and in Switzerland, in Portugal, and also in the United States. And what happens is that stations are not things that come from one day to another, it takes many years.

Working with artistic people is very special, especially when they are so professional.

The Taj Mahal is a monument to love in all cultures.

I've always had a dream about New York. New York is an island... those bridges... the skyline... the dynamism.

Bridges with cables very easily resemble stringed instruments.

The movement of many people through a building can be musical, if the movement is harmonious, rational, but full of life and feeling.

The idea of spirituality is difficult to discuss.

I love the construction process and it is always important because we try to experiment and do something new, so the builders are not copying any technique from other projects. Everything is innovative and so I need to be there and be attentive to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Technology is an important element in progress. See, we can always do something better. We can improve water technology, or energy efficiency. There is always progress forward using technology and that's where innovation starts.

I think it is important to be present in the places where you are working. It is not only about doing a project, but following the project through its construction.

Vitruvius, the great writer, architect and engineer, identified in his famous treatise on Architecture that the three values essential to any work of Architecture were: firmitas, utilitas, and venustas; or firmness, utility, and delight. Firmness meaning well built, solid and resistant; utility meaning useful and functional, and delight meaning beautiful.

As a building is resistant to forces acting upon it, a person must be equally tenacious in life.

Later works are better because it takes a lot of time in architecture to mature. And, it takes a lot of discipline to experience everything that is changing around you.

The architect is not only the director, but he is the composer. And, as a composer, the architect brings a sense of creativity to each building.

You start a project as a young person and then at the end you are another person. You are ready to go for your pension.

It's very atmospheric. It's not a building that is a severe statement in the skyline. We need the height; otherwise, the building almost disappears because it is so slender.

The most touching thing that anyone can say to me is that I have done something beautiful for the community.

Technology is constantly changing and brings you automatically into the present. In that way, it automatically makes you build for this time.

The architect holds much knowledge, but is not a specialist. Especially with the computer and technology, the amount of knowledge an architect possesses keeps on growing.

I am always searching for more light and space.

There was a wish to get something exceptional, ... I also wanted to deliver something technically unique.

The architect needs to learn to see, and to open his eyes because there is always a lesson to learn from the streets.

For me, architecture is an art the same as painting is an art or sculpture is an art. Yet, architecture moves a step beyond painting and sculpture because it is more than using materials. Architecture responds to functional outputs and environmental factors. Yet, fundamentally, it is important for me to stress the art in architecture to bring harmony.

The way is not always easy, but in order to bring a work through to completion, you will need a strong character, a broad foundation of knowledge and an enormous force of persuasion.

The architect is very interesting because the architect is the commander, meaning the one who commands all the workers. The architect is also the music director and composer. He cannot play each instrument, but he needs to understand and embody the sense of each part.

Technology is a vocabulary and a language in which you can say many things.

These three qualities I recommend to you; tenacity, goodness, and intelligence. They are as valuable today as they were in the time of the ancient Greeks, Romans and during the renaissance. They will help make you good professionals.