Santiago Calatrava is a maker of trophies, popular with cities keen to raise their profile with structures like bridges and railway stations whose functional purposes become the occasion for the display of curving, flying, hanging, waving shapes that he likes to compare to skeletons, or birds, or trees, or other things of nature. Sometimes his buildings have moving parts, roofs that open or sunshades that unfurl.
He has the trappings of polymathic genius, he was an engineer and a mathematician before he was an architect and he is also trouble maker; brings in his train a staggering number of alleged mishaps, projects late and over-budget, leaking roofs and falling masonry, broken limbs caused by slippery glass surfaces.
The City of Arts and Sciences in his native city of Valencia, which earned its architect nearly €100m in fees but left a huge public debt.
The opera house there suffered leaks, a flooded basement, obstructed views and falling ceramic cladding. A pergola got too hot in the sun for plants to grow on it. A science centre also leaked and was initially built without fire escapes or lifts for the disabled.
World Trade Center Transportation Hub Oculus in New York went up in cost after attacks on transport in Madrid and London required greater security measures. (Which seemingly hadn’t been included until then, even though Calatrava’s building stands on the site of 9/11.)
£1bn development on Peninsula Place, as it is called, is the centrepiece of the redevelopment of 150 acres of the Greenwich peninsula by the Hong Kong-based property company Knight Dragon in London.
It looks very like other Calatrava projects around the world, because that is what you get when you hire him: his signature, his style, his shapes. Relationships to adjoining buildings tend to be schematic, and if the shape conflicts with function, function tends to lose.
The towers of the Greenwich scheme thicken towards their base, which makes for deep floor plans, which will make it difficult to plan apartments without creating rooms a long way from daylight.
The deal with Calatrava is that, whatever the cost in money and inconvenience, you get attention-grabbing, crowd-pleasing spectacle, which Peninsula Place will deliver. In this case, any financial headaches will be borne by the private sector.
Source: Santiago Calatrava, the man redesigning Greenwich peninsula
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| Santiago Calatrava |
He has the trappings of polymathic genius, he was an engineer and a mathematician before he was an architect and he is also trouble maker; brings in his train a staggering number of alleged mishaps, projects late and over-budget, leaking roofs and falling masonry, broken limbs caused by slippery glass surfaces.
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| The Calatrava-designed City of Arts and Sciences in his home town of Valencia |
The City of Arts and Sciences in his native city of Valencia, which earned its architect nearly €100m in fees but left a huge public debt.
The opera house there suffered leaks, a flooded basement, obstructed views and falling ceramic cladding. A pergola got too hot in the sun for plants to grow on it. A science centre also leaked and was initially built without fire escapes or lifts for the disabled.
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| ‘Oculus’ of Calatrava’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York |
World Trade Center Transportation Hub Oculus in New York went up in cost after attacks on transport in Madrid and London required greater security measures. (Which seemingly hadn’t been included until then, even though Calatrava’s building stands on the site of 9/11.)
£1bn development on Peninsula Place, as it is called, is the centrepiece of the redevelopment of 150 acres of the Greenwich peninsula by the Hong Kong-based property company Knight Dragon in London.
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| Peninsula Place’s three towers rise above the nearby O2 and North Greenwich station in an artist’s impression |
It looks very like other Calatrava projects around the world, because that is what you get when you hire him: his signature, his style, his shapes. Relationships to adjoining buildings tend to be schematic, and if the shape conflicts with function, function tends to lose.
The towers of the Greenwich scheme thicken towards their base, which makes for deep floor plans, which will make it difficult to plan apartments without creating rooms a long way from daylight.
The deal with Calatrava is that, whatever the cost in money and inconvenience, you get attention-grabbing, crowd-pleasing spectacle, which Peninsula Place will deliver. In this case, any financial headaches will be borne by the private sector.
Source: Santiago Calatrava, the man redesigning Greenwich peninsula
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