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The Beauty Part
Four years after 9/11, no one can decide on the buildings that will replace the World Trade Center or the memorial that will be erected to honor the dead. Wait--there is one exception. Everyone loves the design for the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, which will connect that much-trafficked area to subways and the train to New Jersey.
The design for that terminal sailed through the review process because it is utterly fantastic. White, arched like a fish and ornamented with white steel that looks like fish bones radiating from a spine, it's like nothing Americans have ever seen. There's a reason: The architect of the first building to be erected on this iconic American site isn't an American.
He is a Spaniard who has worked extensively in Zurich and Paris and Barcelona. He has won a million prizes and 13 honorary doctorates. And he is generally considered the planet's most exciting architect.
Why the praise? Because his work is like no other: a skyscraper that twists and turns like a plant growing toward the sun, an apartment building that looks like randomly stacked cubes. No wonder the new exhibition of his work at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is called 'Sculpture into Architecture'--he draws, he sculpts, he takes his cue from nature.
Now there's a book of his work: the most exciting art book I've seen in a long time. Five and a half pounds. Three hundred images. Connections that will excite anyone who cares not just about architecture and engineering, but about sculpture and anatomy and poetry. The architect? Santiago Calatrava.
The design for that terminal sailed through the review process because it is utterly fantastic. White, arched like a fish and ornamented with white steel that looks like fish bones radiating from a spine, it's like nothing Americans have ever seen. There's a reason: The architect of the first building to be erected on this iconic American site isn't an American.
He is a Spaniard who has worked extensively in Zurich and Paris and Barcelona. He has won a million prizes and 13 honorary doctorates. And he is generally considered the planet's most exciting architect.
Why the praise? Because his work is like no other: a skyscraper that twists and turns like a plant growing toward the sun, an apartment building that looks like randomly stacked cubes. No wonder the new exhibition of his work at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is called 'Sculpture into Architecture'--he draws, he sculpts, he takes his cue from nature.
Now there's a book of his work: the most exciting art book I've seen in a long time. Five and a half pounds. Three hundred images. Connections that will excite anyone who cares not just about architecture and engineering, but about sculpture and anatomy and poetry. The architect? Santiago Calatrava.
