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Santiago Calatrava selected by MIT to receive
$70,000 McDermott Award for innovation in the arts

Santiago Calatrava

Acclaimed architect to present public lecture March 8 at MIT

For Immediate Release: Feb. 2, 2005

Cambridge, MA...Internationally acclaimed architect, engineer and artist Santiago Calatrava has been awarded the 2005 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts by the Council for the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Established in 1974, the McDermott Award in the Arts is given annually to a distinguished artist recognized for excellence and innovation in his/her field. Beginning this year, MIT has increased the award to $70,000 and raised the criteria, reflecting the award's growing status as well as the heightened importance of the arts at MIT.

In conjunction with the award, Calatrava will present a public lecture, "Recent Work," at MIT on Tuesday, March 8, from 6:30-7:30 p.m. in Room 10-250 (enter at 77 Massachusetts Avenue). As a visiting artist from March 8-10 he will meet and work with architecture, civil engineering and computer science students.

Calatrava will be presented with the award at a Council for the Arts gala on Thursday, March 10, at the University Park Hotel in Cambridge, MA.

"I am deeply grateful that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology should recognize my work," Santiago Calatrava stated. "But, even more, I am moved that this great institution should recognize the ability of art to inform and influence the exact sciences. In the era of Brunelleschi, no one doubted this potential. Today, when art and science are so often pursued as separate endeavors, MIT is performing a tremendous service by helping to bring them back together."

""It's thrilling to have the first of the new international McDermott Awards going to Santiago Calatrava," said Alan Brody, Associate Provost for the Arts at MIT. "He is the embodiment of the MIT ideal of interpenetration of science, technology and the arts. I'm sure that Eugene McDermott, for whom the award is named, would have been proud to see Mr. Calatrava as the 2005 recipient."

Called the "poet of glass and steel" when named one of Time Magazine's Innovators of 2004, Calatrava first won acclaim in Europe for his revolutionary design of bridges, airports and train stations and became celebrated in the United States upon completion of his first American project, the expansion of the Milwaukee Art Museum (2001). "Calatrava has brought to the world of travel an incomparable high-tech lyricism. His structures speak plainly of engineering, of struts and cables, white concrete pylons and keen-edged glass louvers. But at the same time they suggest unmistakably the pliant forms of nature-an eye, a torso, a bird in flight, that inspire him," wrote Time's Richard Lacayo.

These elemental and lyrical forms of Calatrava's architecture most recently have manifested in the architect-engineer-artist's cathedral-like design for the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, the $2 billion, natural light-filled design linking the commuter trains and subway lines that converge at the World Trade Center site. Also in recent months, millions enjoyed the harmony created at the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens thanks to Calatrava's master plan for the Athens Olympic Sports Complex, which included his soaringly spectacular designs for the Olympic Stadium and Velodrome, the Agora and the Nations Wall.

In February 2005, he will receive the 2005 AIA Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. The highest honor the AIA confers to an individual, the Gold Medal recognizes an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.

Calatrava was recently a visiting professor of architecture at MIT, and his 1997 lectures at MIT, "Santiago Calatrava: Conversations with Students--The MIT Lectures," were published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2002.

Calatrava is the 30th recipient of the McDermott Award, joining the ranks of such visionaries as sculptor Henry Moore, scientist and photographer Harold E. "Doc" Edgerton, architect I.M. Pei and composer Tan Dun.

Among Calatrava's other most notable recent works are: Sondica Airport, Bilbao (2000); James Joyce Bridge, Dublin (2003); the Auditorio de Tenerife, Santa Cruz, Canary Islands (2003); and Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay, Redding, Calif. (2004). Nearing completion are the Petach Tikvah Bridge, Tel Aviv; Quarto Ponte sul Canal Grande, Venice; the "Turning Torso" residential tower in Malm-, Sweden; and the Palacio de las Artes, the last building for Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences. Calatrava's firm also is currently designing Atlanta Symphony Center.

In nominating him for the AIA Gold Medal, 2004 Committee Chair J. Windom Kimsey, FAIA, and 2001-02 AIA Vice President Edward J. Kodet, FAIA--speaking on behalf of the AIA Committee on Design--wrote, "Santiago Calatrava exemplifies sculptural expression and engineering through architecture. Calatrava's work is like music: well orchestrated. It is architecture that delights and finds new meaning each time it is experienced." The committee also noted, "Santiago Calatrava's work seeks out the essence of architecture. His architecture expands the vision and expresses the energy of the human spirit, captivating the imagination and delighting us in the wonders of what sculptural form and dynamic structure can accomplish. Santiago Calatrava defines the reason for the AIA Gold Medal. His vision elevates the human spirit through the creation of environments in which we live, play and work."

About Calatrava

A native of Valencia, Spain, Calatrava, whose heritage extends back to a medieval order of knights, began his formal instruction in the arts at the age of eight. He was a teenager when Spain's dictatorship relaxed its travel restrictions, allowing him to study in Paris and Switzerland as an exchange student. He earned his degree in architecture from the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura in Valencia and a PhD in engineering from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich.

Calatrava established his first office in Zurich and soon after gained acclaim as a bridge designer, beginning with the commission of the Bach de Roda Bridge for the 1984 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Among his other feats of bridge engineering and beauty are the Alamillo Bridge for the World's Fair in Seville (1992), the Campo Volantin Footbridge in Bilbao (1997) and the Alameda Bridge and subway station in Valencia (1995). Establishment of the firm's second office in Paris in 1989 coincided with the design of the Lyon Airport Station, which was completed in 1994. A third office in Valencia followed in 1991 with work on the City of Arts and Sciences, a very large cultural complex, which continues to this day. He recently also opened a New York City office. Among his myriad awards Calatrava counts the Gold Medal of the Institute of Structural Engineers, London; the City of Toronto Urban Design Award, Toronto; the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts, Ministry of Culture, Spain; Time magazine's "Best of 2001" designation for the Milwaukee Art Museum expansion; the Sir Misha Black Medal, Royal College of Art, London; the Leonardo da Vinci Medal, Florence; the Gold Medal of Architecture of L'Academie d'Architecture, Paris; the European Steel Design Award for the University of Zurich Law School roof, Lucerne, Switzerland; the Silver Beam Award of the Swedish Institute of Steel Construction, Gotherburg, Sweden; the Illuminating Design Award of Merit of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, New York; and 13 honorary doctorates.

Calatrava has captured the hearts and imagination of the public and his clients as well as those of designers and engineers around the globe. Joseph J. Seymour, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, summed up the impact of Calatrava's work when writing about the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, for which the Port Authority is the client. "In addition to being an inspiration in this country and around the world, Mr. Calatrava's transportation facility will serve thousands of commuter and tourists each day," Seymour pointed out. "...Mr. Calatrava captivated the New York-New Jersey region when he unveiled a soaring, spectacular design concept for the transportation hub, which will be one of the centerpieces for the redeveloped World Trade Center site. It is my firm belief that Mr. Calatrava's glass-and-steel winged building will one day serve as an inspiring architectural icon for New York City, rivaling some of the city's more famous transportation facilities, including Grand Central Station."

About the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts

The Eugene McDermott Award was established in 1974 by the Council for the Arts at MIT to honor the memory of Eugene McDermott, benefactor to MIT in education and the arts. From 1974 to 1989, the award was presented annually to an individual for "major contributions to the arts as a means of human fulfillment." In 1990, the Council for the Arts amended the criteria of the award to enhance its relevance to the MIT community. Hereafter the award would recognize an artist, not affiliated with MIT, for the highest standard of creative achievement. In 2005, the value of the award was raised to $70,000 in keeping with its increased status. The award recipient is honored at a gala presentation and serves as a visiting artist at MIT to work with students and faculty. Recipients of the award since 1974 have included filmmaker Isaac Julien, interdisciplinary artists-architects Diller + Scofidio, photographer J eff Wall, composer Tan Dun and sculptor Henry Moore.

About the Council for the Arts at MIT

The Council for the Arts at MIT is a volunteer group of alumni and friends established to support the visual, literary and performing arts at MIT. Since its founding in 1972 by MIT President Jerome B. Wiesner, the Council for the Arts has worked to "to foster the arts at MIT...[and]... to act as a catalyst for the development of a broadly based, highly participatory program in the arts." Appointed by the President of MIT to three-year terms, Council members serve as advocates and advisors to MIT's Associate Provost for the Arts.