Santiago
Calatravas Travels
by Christoph
Schwab
First Run / Icarus Films, Brooklyn NY,
1999
VHS, 77 mins., color
Sales: Video-DVD
$398.00; rental: Video $125.00
Distributors website: http://www.frif.com.
Reviewed by Artur Goczewski
Department of Art, University of Northern
Iowa
artur.goczewski@uni.edu
Santiago Calatrava is increasingly recognized
as one of the most important living architects.
Among his growing list of awards is the
prestigious 2005 Gold Medal of the American
Institute of Architects: the institutions
highest honor conferred on individuals
whose work has had a lasting influence
on the theory and practice of architecture.
Calatrava has numerous projects underway
in many parts of the globe, and this film
very aptly takes us along on his
travels as this engineer and architect
visits some of his own building sites.
With rare effectiveness, the film makes
actual characters of the typical frustrations
and rewards that come with the profession
of architecture so that we can observe,
firsthand, Calatravas architectural
methods both at a construction site as
well as at his desk. What is more valuable,
however, is that we are also treated to
well articulated and illustrated conversations
with the artist that enable us to understand
his creative thought process and to arrive
at a clear comprehension of his work,
an understanding of it not just as a progression
of engineered developments and transformations,
but also of how its elements work together
conceptually and esthetically as an orchestrated
work of art.
In conversation, Calatrava shares the
formal vocabulary of his architecture.
He regards his work as abstracted projections
of natural forces that he achieves by
creating environments that relate dynamically
to and interact with the mechanics of
motion of the human body. If one were
to choose the most salient feature of
Calatravas work, it would have to
be some kind of motion, the antithesis
of stasis. Virtually all his architectural
structures are curved, or slanted, or
twisted, or asymmetrical, or possess actual
moving parts, or in some way combine those
components. He once said: "Whenever
I get an opportunity to introduce something
mechanical and movable, I have done so
Why? Because in terms of physics, the
discipline of mechanics includes two branches,
esthetics and dynamics, but they are all
the same."
Another key attribute of his work is its
structural transparency, which permits
the observer (in Calatravas words)
"to see a pattern of readability."
This access to the formal language of
the structure makes it possible for observers
to engage in it more fully, by recognizing
its various forms as a deployment of forces
that define a field of action, and, in
turn, invoke a self re-conception as an
esthetic force of (re)action.
In clarifying his strategy of provoking
an esthetic or "free" (re)action
of the observer, Calatrava makes the comment
that, through architecture, he "can
channel all the impulses of free thinking,
free feeling, shape, form, the natural
[flow]
" and that he does this
by combining an apparent simplicity of
form with the intrinsic nature of materials,
in such a way that the materials
internal forces are dramatically articulated
(by the way in which he has shaped them)
for a maximum impact. Calatravas
architectural language, which is highly
readable and yet, at the same time, devoid
of specific meaning or associations, provokes
"the impulses of free feeling, free
thinking" or the esthetic re-design
of the forces channeled and embodied by
their materials.
This interesting film offers an opportunity
to witness the working process and beliefs
of one of the most aspiring architects
of our time. An opportunity like this
does not present itself every day, and
it really should be shared with students,
whenever contemporary art, architecture,
and/or design are taught. From a didactic
perspective, it could be useful to think
about Calatravas ideas in combination
with the earlier beliefs and formal vocabulary
of Russian Constructivists as Vladimir
Tatlin and Naum Gabo. In particular, Tatlins
Monument to the Third International
(1919-20), which uses mechanical motions
and projections of forces based on the
properties of the construction material,
seems to anticipate the major formal and
conceptual principles of Calatravas
recent work.
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast
Quarterly Review, Volume 20, Number
4, Summer 2005.)