Santiago Calatrava: Complete Works (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Poised against the sky like fantastic giant birds, the bridges and buildings of Santiago Calatrava possess a breathtaking grace and rhythm. Some--including the Milwaukee Art Museum and the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain--are designed to expand and contract like living organisms. In Santiago Calatrava: The Complete Works, Alexander Tzonis portrays the Spanish architect as a unique blend of artist and engineer. Using analogy as a creative tool, Calatrava has filled notebooks with bold sketches of lunging and leaping human bodies that mutate into arcing roof forms and bridge suspensions. At the same time--as the author of a doctoral thesis about how to design frame structures that can open and close--he has invented new systems that combine efficiency and stability with the elegance of a brilliant mathematical solution. Tzonis, an architecture professor whose writing is a model of clarity, leads the general reader through the intricacies of Calatrava's solutions for folding frames and new kinds of curved surfaces. Vastly superior in its depth of analysis to Philip Jodidio's Santiago Calatrava, Tzonis's authoritative text is accompanied by hundreds of glorious large-scale images of the work by numerous photographers. The book opens with a photo anthology of Calatrava's greatest works and then follows the development of his vision from 1979 to his 2004 design for the World Trade Center Transportation Hub. At the beginning of his career, Calatrava designed a roof that looks like a flying machine from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Tzonis writes that the concept was "a personal manifesto of what architecture could be: innovative, optimistic, rational, and playful." Conceived a mere eight years later, the Alamillo Bridge in Seville became an instant landmark. A towering, dramatically back-angled pylon supports 13 pairs of cables as deftly as if they were strings on a harp, pushing notions of tension and stability to a thrilling new extreme. --Cathy Curtis

Product Description

This is the only comprehensive book that covers the entire work of Santiago Calatrava: technological structures, building complexes, urban design, furniture, sculpture and drawings with 300 color images.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications (November 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847826414
• ISBN-13: 978-0847826414
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 9.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #459,107 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Soaring Excellence, May 4, 2005

By	Shannon Deason "SchylarRex" (Houston) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a very thorough book on an amazing architect. Calatrava is a highly original architect and most of his work is nothing short of breathtaking. The photography in this book really captures the magic of his sculptures. That is what his buildings really are; great works of art. This book covers his work in detail and the text is informative. I appreciated that a model of the station at the World Trade Center site is included, one really hopes it gets build just as designed. I highly recommend this book to anyone intersted in great architecture, this man is a singular talent.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful book...Great Pictures!, June 26, 2006

By	Mario Cisneros "Mario4387" (Manhattan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an excellent book, You will read about his biography and all his works, including some skeatches of the creative process.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "must have" for architects & students, October 17, 2006

By	Sung H. Park (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

whenever i look at his work, i say to myself he's a genius.
i just love how he makes structures sculptural.
he's a pure genius of combining sculpture, structure and architecture.