SANTIAGO CALATRAVA & BRUTALIST ARCHITECTURE | ICARCH 2023

International Conversations about Architecture
A series of online lectures on architecture, from ancient architecture to contemporary architecture and experimental works. We celebrate the birthdays of famous architects.
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[@paulcoffey359]

Calatrava's attempts to emulate or progress Candela's work, particularly with concrete are rarely interesting or good. The Valencia building is like all the bad graphic design, patterning and image making of the 1990's rolled up in one building. You can see that he is trying everything to make it a 'great' building, but like with colours, if you just keep adding them, all you end up with is brown.
Calatrava's best concrete work is in the foundational structures (many bridges, Venice included) and in the steel roof overhang and cantilevered structures where he manages to create Candela like concrete lightness, but with a ribbed or repetitive structural steel frame.
Most of Calatrava's sculptural form making struggles to manage the influence of his evident predecessors (Gaudi, Saarinen, Utzon, Candela) and just never really seems to break through into something really good and really personally Calatrava. Venice is a good example. You can see he is trying to employ his strengths to reduce the visual dominance of the structure by making the cantilevered surfaces of glass, exposing the structure under. Yet, there are too many structural ribs and their dimensions are far too large in the final outcome to create the intended effect.