To discuss the stylistic influences on an architect would be a nearly endless task: drawing upon everything from an architect’s childhood and education to their culture and experiences. Santiago Calatrava, Spanish architect and engineer, is no exception. The unique style which characterizes Calatrava, and which can be seen in the Quadracci Pavilion addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, cannot easily be attributed to any one source.
Many cite Calatrava’s unique education as both engineer and architect, whereas others attribute the soaring organic forms of Calatrava to architects like Eero Saarinen (whose Milwaukee County War Memorial perches above and to the north of the Quadracci Pavilion). However, if one seminal influence on the architecture of Santiago Calatrava –and subsequently, the Quadracci Pavilion addition- must be named, the resounding answer would be the ideas and works of another influential Spanish architect: Antonio Gaudí.
From early on in his career, Santiago Calatrava has been known for his audaciously sculptural organic forms. With the completion of the iconic Montjuïc Communications Tower in 1991 (built in Barcelona, Spain as a focal point for the 1992 summer Olympic site), Calatrava was catapulted into the international architectural spotlight and began to receive a variety of new commissions (Ching, 754). As his career plowed forward, Calatrava’s architectural intrepid began to follow the escalation of his client’s budgets and expand in extravagance until the current culmination in the Quadracci Pavilion addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Just as Calatrava’s Quadracci Pavilion addition and other recent works are a current avant-garde exploration into new technological capabilities for the innovation of form and structure; one century earlier, a “young Antonio Gaudí was also experimenting with concrete, [and was] producing forms that today still are staggeringly fresh, as in the strange vase- and bottle shaped skylights of the Casa Mila in Barcelona” (Ching, 669). Here, Calatrava and Gaudí seem to work concurrently across a time-gap of a hundred years to propel forward at the forefront of architecture in their respective generations. Calatrava was born and raised in north-eastern Spain along the Mediterranean coast, where fluid, sumptuous references to Gaudí are common. Growing up under this influence resulted in a kind of subconscious awareness of Gaudí’s theory on form and function, which is revealed in Calatrava’s design for the Quadracci Pavilion addition.
Despite renown for the dramatic manifestation of their buildings, both Calatrava and Gaudí base their architectural expression on function, rather than form. Calatrava’s engineering background becomes apparent when considering this aspect of his architecture in regards to the Quadracci Pavilion addition. Indeed, “the Milwaukee Art Museum Addition is such a complete synthesis of design and engineering that it could not have been conceived by someone without training in both fields” (Kent, 39). However, his emphasis on structure cannot be attributed singly to his educational background in engineering, but also to the architectural philosophy of Calatrava’s Spanish predecessor: Antonio Gaudí.
Calatrava, “like Gaudi before him…favors structural systems where the shape is determined by funicular polygons, which lend the building a vague resemblance to the skeleton of a mythical animal” (Trame, 92) as obviously seen in the form of Calatrava’s Quadracci Pavilion addition as well as many of Gaudí’s works. Such works include Gaudí ‘s infamously unfinished La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which demonstrates not only a hulking mythological beast but also reveals structure through a simple hierarchy of structural and decorative elements.
Another similarity can be seen in the flowing shape of Gaudí’s Casa Mila, also located in Barcelona. Gaudí is renowned for the delicate intricacy and details of his buildings, and is often criticized for being over-decorated. Well-known architectural historian Francis Ching once observed that “due to the richness of Gaudí’s forms, it might seem that he was preeminently sculptural, but this too would be a mistake. According to [Gaudí], the priorities of the architect are situation, measure, material, and only then form” (Ching, 659). Calatrava has placed precedence to the function of the Quadracci Pavilion addition as a development of the architectural concepts of his Spanish predecessor, Antonio Gaudí.
While many comparisons may be drawn between Calatrava and Gaudí, the resemblance between the Quadracci Pavilion addition and the work of Gaudí is more of extension than similar work. Divided by a century, Calatrava’s work shows derivation in the works of Gaudí while surpassing his predecessor in their main similar pursuit: the development of an effective and handsome interior space paired with magnificent monumental exterior construction.
While “Gaudí worked on a structural syntax from the outside inward, in response to a very architectural concept, whereby the sense of the surface and the sensation of the internal space emerged from a sophisticated sense of chiaroscuro. However in Calatrava’s work, even shadow is luminous” (Trame, 92). The simplicity of Calatrava’s design is what lends itself to such luminosity- discarding Gaudí’s preference for ornate decoration in favor of a stylized simplicity of material complemented by luxuriously filtered light.
This subtle glow of interior light (created with subtle light vents, simple and pure white surfaces, and a highly-reflective marble floor) is one of the most captivating aspects of the Quadracci Pavilion, although often overshadowed by the extravagance of the massive steel kinetic sculpture –known as the Burke Brise Soleil- atop the Quadracci Pavilion. Here, a parallel between Calatrava and Gaudí can be drawn again in their stubborn persistence towards architecture like nothing before constructed. Both architects stretch the limits of physics and existing materials in their structures.
“Santiago Calatrava is a rare combination. Of architect and engineer. Of artist and mathematician. Of knowledge and imagination. He has a Spanish passion (from the country where he was born) and Swiss control (from the country where he was educated and married” (Kent, 8). This combination has resulted in an architect with a truly unique skill set and background to stretch the boundaries of possibilities in architecture. In a recent interview, Calatrava admitted that “with all due modesty, one might say that what we do is a natural continuation of the work of Gaudí”. This admission confesses not to a mere repetition of architectural techniques, but to a thought process which uses the past, present, and future to create an architecturally-significant structure such as the Quadracci Pavilion addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum.
References:
Ching, Francis D.K. et al. A Global History of Architecture.
New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
Jodido, Philip. Santiago Calatrava.
Koln: Taschen GmbH, 2003.
Kent, Cheryl. Santiago Calatrava Milwaukee Art Museum Quadracci Pavilion.
New York: Rizzoli, 2005.
Trame, Umberto. Santiago Calatrava Quadracci Pavilion Milwaukee Art Museum.
Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 2001.
Images by Jonathan Choe
