Quotes from Santiago Calatrava

I don't see any difference between architecture and engineering. It's the same profession.

I paint and work as a sculptor, and I see architecture as an art... If you follow this approach you can use techniques to the service of man and to the service of an artistic idea, and beauty.

I always admired the U.S. as the country of the space shuttle, of technological achievement.

I am an engineer, not just an architect, so I've always been motivated by technique or technology. As soon as technology moves just a little bit, it changes architecture.

I think it is important to build for people, and to deliver this message of hope: through good construction and a certain sense of progression, a better understanding of each other can be achieved.

I understand and accept criticisms of my work, provided they are done with professional criteria and arguments.

I don't go running after publicity.

Architecture is a code. It's a pure code, derived from the dimensions of nature.

Valencia is a pure Mediterranean city; it is a city like Naples or Palermo, like Rome a little bit. Walking in the old town has a little bit of the flavor of the old city of Rome.

When I work on sculpture, I don't have to worry about function. When I work on a piece of architecture, I must think about function all the time.

I visited Notre Dame at 11 in the morning and the sun was entering through the south rose window, it was so impressive. This is when architecture can be king and give people sensations, like music.

I just want to build the best buildings. It's not about me, it's about the buildings, creating a space where society can gather and marvel in beauty and nature.

Many architects say that they will never do a bridge. But I think they will discover that just as Fallingwater is a piece of art, so Golden Gate is a piece of art of the 20th century.

It is an exceptional event to build a cathedral - it must withstand several lifetimes.

Technology is constantly changing and brings you automatically into the present. In that way, it automatically makes you build for this time.

Technology is a vocabulary and a language in which you can say many things.

The architect holds much knowledge, but is not a specialist. Especially with the computer and technology, the amount of knowledge an architect possesses keeps on growing.

Actually, if you look at the works of the great architects of our time, you can see that their most beautiful works are always their later works - Kahn, Corbusier, even Gehry.

The movement of many people through a building can be musical, if the movement is harmonious, rational, but full of life and feeling.

Airports need an identity, a main hall that defines the dignity of the space and allows people to move fluidly throughout its ancillary parts.

Chicago is a beautiful city with a wonderful skyline.

The best is to go into a train station that I've built and buy a ticket. The guy in the ticket booth might recognize me, which is a marvelous feeling, but it might be that he doesn't and I go in like any other passenger, except that I enter with a critical eye, looking to see how it's held up.

I would like to be an artist who works in a very closed ambience.

A new building should deliver a feeling of hope.