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Palacio de Congresos/Hotel Ayre Oviedo

Calatrava's early career was largely dedicated to bridges and railway stations, with designs that elevated the status of civil engineering projects to new heights. His Montjuic Communications Tower in Barcelona, Spain (1991) in the heart of the 1992 Olympics site, as well as the Allen Lambert Galleria in Toronto, Canada (1992), were important works and turning points in his career, leading to a wide range of commissions. The Quadracci Pavilion (2001) of the Milwaukee Art Museum was his first building in the United States. Calatrava's entry into high-rise design began with an innovative 54-story-high twisting tower called Turning Torso (2005), located in Malmö, Sweden.

 

Calatrava has designed a neofuturistic railway station, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, at the rebuilt World Trade Center in New York City. It is expected to open in 2015, six years behind schedule, at a cost of $4 billion, twice the original budget.

 

In 2002 he was awarded the Sir Misha Black award and was added to the College of Medallists.

 

Calatrava has defined his style as bridging the division between structural engineering and architecture. In his projects, he claims to continue a tradition of Spanish modernist engineering that included Félix Candela, Antonio Gaudí, and Rafael Guastavino, with a very personal style that derives from numerous studies of the human body and the natural world. Architecture critics, however, see his work as a continuation of the neofuturistic expressionism of Eero Saarinen.

 

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Uploaded on October 14, 2015
Taken on July 25, 2015