Quotes from Santiago Calatrava

Many of the architects I admire have given the best of themselves as they mature. I'm hoping to do the same.

For the first project I did in North America, I was asked as an artist, not as an architect, to collaborate on a big development in the heart of Toronto. I was working with other artists and was in charge of giving form to a street, and I proposed a galleria.

I always considered the role of teaching to be very noble and relevant.

Some have tried to use my work for politics, using inaccurate or out-of-context information that, repeated enough, becomes truth to some even though it is not.

There is a change in the view about how condominiums are designed. People used to make prototype apartments and reproduce these boxes hundreds and even thousands of times, and then ask people to conform.

Architecture is a wrapping for the human body, and dance is the finest expression of the body.

In the 19th and 20th centuries we saw nature as something to use to our profit, but the attitude of man towards nature in the 21st century will be a bit different.

The Freedom Tower has a cost overrun. A significant cost overrun.

Bridges with cables very easily resemble stringed instruments.

New York is not a place that lets you be indifferent. New York is this kind of place that, wherever you go, wherever you move, you are always confronted by your own time.

A bridge is born of necessity, but it must establish its own identity. It should harmonize with its surroundings, and the design must transcend the purely local and transform the setting.

The two most important functional aspects to be fulfilled in a transportation facility are ease of wayfinding and easy orientation.

Bridges join places that were separated. They are built for the sake of progress and for the average citizen. They even have a religious dimension. Even the word 'religious' comes from the Latin, meaning 'creating a link.'

If I was not born in this lifetime in New York, certainly in a previous life, I was a New Yorker.

As a student I travelled around the Mediterranean - the Greek islands and Salerno on the south coast of Italy.

I've always had a dream about New York. New York is an island... those bridges... the skyline... the dynamism.

Not only did America invent the skyscraper, it invented the skyline.

For people of the younger generation, the 21st century has started for them with a positive sign that Valencia is and will continue to be a very modern city.

In my opinion, as an engineer, a bridge is the most difficult thing you can do. You are not working in the direction of gravity but against it - so the problem opposes the solution.

The function of arts centers goes far beyond being places for performance. They might not be explicitly religious, but they are civic and social spaces.

The reality is that throughout my career I've tackled projects in Spain that I'm proud of.

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is for the community of San Francisco. And the Brooklyn Bridge, which is one of the most magnificent bridges ever built, is also a monument to the community, you see.

The Taj Mahal is a monument to love in all cultures.

I like the word monument, because the word monument is a Latin word.