Original subtitles

Narrator: Santiago Calatrava is the 21st century

equivalent of 'Renaissance Man'.

Artist and sculptor, engineer and architect,

his stellar career has been influenced by everyone

from Michelangelo to Giacometti.

[soft piano music]

He's given us a world full of spectacular bridges,

airports, railway stations, and other public buildings.

All instantly identifiable

by their white fins wrapped around sinuous shapes.

In his late 60s, he shows no signs of retiring.

Rushing round the world in search of the next commission,

the next architecture competition.

Though he was born in Spain,

Calatrava has long lived in Switzerland,

this ordered and efficient country

a perfect match for his gentle,

thoughtful and considered approach to life and design.

Before that, he and his family lived in New York.

And it's in Manhattan that his practice has just completed

the project which may have moved him more than any other.

A transportation hub for the New York

and New Jersey Port Authority at the World Trade Center,

where the Twin Towers were destroyed by terrorists

on 11 September 2001.

And where the victims included staff

of the Port Authority itself.

- The building there has to be exceptional.

It's not like doing another station in a wonderful city

like New York, which it is already exceptional.

But it is a station for Ground Zero.

And this...let's say oriented from the day one

the conception of the design.

[soft piano music]

Narrator: For commuters using the Port Authority

Trans-Hudson trains,

the World Trade Center Transportation Hub

delivers them to Lower Manhattan.

It surfaces near the memorial to those who died in 2001.

And in the shadow of the towers

that were part of the master plan

by the American-Polish architect Daniel Libeskind,

the man who said,

"Cities are the greatest creations of humanity."

In his original scheme the train station

was to have been part of one of those towers.

But Santiago Calatrava and the Port Authority

felt it deserved greater prominence

in a space of its own.

- My idea was, first of all, making an autonomous building.

And second...

..landmarking also this particular corner in a way

or knowledgeable that the scale of the skyscrapers

conceived at the time, you know,

in the master plan of Daniel Libeskind.

Was...

..so to restore the idea of the skyline.

But looking it from Brooklyn, do you understand?

So, the wonderful view of the Twin Towers, you know,

traversing, that image was really an astounding view.

Lower Manhattan, the skyline, and then the Twin Towers

substitute in the original plan of Daniel Libeskind.

Very sensible, you know, in a kind of harmonious

growing buildings towards the freedoms tower.

So, I thought that this - very well thought and very well done.

But is part of the skyline of New York,

which it is a piece of art by itself.

[orchestral music]

Then I thought, when I am a person, you know,

working in the area, working in the garden.

I need elements related to my scale,

who link my scale to the scale of the skyscrapers,

and humanise,

humanise, so the scale of the skyscraper.

So I was I feel very comfortable with the scale of it.

I never thought the building is small.

No, the building is appropriate,

because is delivering you a...a scale in between yourself

and the gigantic scale of the...

..of the neighbouring building.

[orchestral music]

Narrator: For Calatrava, the World Trade Center site

presented an opportunity not only to remember the victims

of 9/11 but also to revitalise the public realm.

Like much of America,

the infrastructure of New York has been neglected.

The age of publicly funding great buildings

and public spaces has long passed.

Worse, some of the most iconic have been demolished.

Pennsylvania Station went in 1963 -

"incomprehensible" Calatrava calls it.

Grand Central, now heroically restored,

came close to being lost in the 1970s.

Where was his inspiration?

In the most famous squares of Europe.

The Piazza Navona in Rome, Salamanca's Plaza Mayor,

Piazza san Marco in Venice,

which Napoleon called 'the drawing room of Europe.'

Calatrava wanted to bring some of that spirit to Manhattan,

to make the Transportation Hub and its surrounding square

a place people would not only pass through but also enjoy.

He was motivated, too,

by the spiritual power of architecture.

He believes in the ability of buildings to move people

and not just churches.

He admires Grand Central Station and its main hall.

Why shouldn't those on the daily commute into New York

be given a structure which would uplift them.

- I was also upset of the idea of learning from New York.

From the existing civic monuments and from the sense

extraordinary sense of community that the American society has.

That we Europeans has lost a little bit

through the social system,

because the state is providing us, you know, a lot of things,

and this doesn't...doesn't exist so much in the United States.

And...and...and what you have, it is a lot of social effort

coming from the communitarian effort,

from the sense of community from the people.

So, I was fascinated from these ideas,

and so finally for me,

the inspiration or the example was in Grand Central.

I wanted to recreate a space

who can be at the end of the...I mean, in the 21 century,

compatible to the effort done one...100 years

before building Grand Central.

And doing this extraordinary space, that even today,

100 years later is completely functional, completely working,

even, you know, they preserve a lot of things,

people are buying tickets in another way.

But they still, you know,

they are giving something in the centre.

It is the time. You know, [laughs] the hour.

Everybody can see this fantastic, [laughs]

clock and so I mean, this I think is really extraordinary.

Even I have also to say that I...I knew the space before,

the space has been restored with a lot of sensibilities.

Indeed, and the...the idea of reproducing

or creating a symmetric space by doing a new stairs.

And so, was very well done, very well done,

and so also our space is symmetric.

Isn't it, on one end and the other.

Symmetric also on both sides

and so it has a lot of very clear references,

being in a completely different language.

But [stutters] I mean,

this, what, er, at the time they try to do with stone and brass

and bronze and all of that.

We have done that with glass, steel, marble and light.

Also like light like they have been using.

We are also using light.

Narrator: But this was just the beginning.

From a sketch on paper to completion,

would take 15 years of Santiago Calatrava's life

and become, in his own words,

one of the most complex sites in the world.

[soft music]

Narrator: Santiago Calatrava was born in Valencia.

He studied architecture, then aged 22,

moved to Zurich to study civil engineering.

He opened his practice in 1981 and he is here still,

rising at 5.45am every morning,

running by the lake before breakfast

and then spending three hours painting and drawing.

[soft music]

- I think it is a great thing

when an architect can draw

freehand and draw beautifully.

Not every architect can,

and of course,

you can do things with models, you can do it with CAD.

But the actual ability to draw and conceive things,

and do details and test them out, you know, freehand.

I think is a wonderful talent.

And it's wonderful for the client, too,

to actually have the architect sitting there

in front of you and drawing it out, as you are speaking.

And Calatrava has the...this, and he loves drawing.

And of course, it's wonderful to see, you know,

the forms taking shape on paper.

Which otherwise, an architect can explain to you

but it's nothing like seeing it on paper.

And when done in a beautiful freehand as he can do it.

[uplifting music]

Narrator: At his office in the city centre

he's surrounded by young architects proud to be working

for one of the architecture world's most iconic figures.

And model makers whose task is to realise, in 3D,

maquettes of Calatrava's designs.

Here, in miniature, are reminders of the shapes

that have made Calatrava famous world wide.

[uplifting music]

- When it comes to bridges, one of his great inspirations

was the Swiss engineer Robert Maillart.

And he was a...an early minimalist

that he really did push the boundaries.

That he, he stripped down the basic elements

you know, the arch, the deck, to the absolute minimum.

And of course they make these very graceful structures,

you know, spanning mountain gorges

and actually touching the ground and the air lightly.

And that is something I think Calatrava inherited.

Of course some of his architecture is quite beefy

and strong, and er, you know, has a lot of mass to it.

But equally that grace and lightness undoubtedly

I think comes or was inspired by Maillart.

Most adventurous bridges today

are built by a combination of architect and engineer.

But that's what's incredible about Santiago,

is that he is trained as engineer and architect

so he combines these skills, in one person.

He's taking modernism in a new direction.

Where were used to seeing beautiful sleek boxes, you know,

clean lines right angles.

But his approach is incredibly sculptural

and it's very dramatic.

And he has this wonderful vision

that he can actually think in three dimensions and draw,

and conceive these bridges and stations and airports.

And they all have this wonderful feel

as if they've been modelled by the hand of an artist.

But behind it is this muscularity and suppleness

which is really the hand of the sculpture too.

He has an absolutely recognisable style.

There is no doubt about that.

It's because of his...his way he moulds steel and concrete

into these signature forms, almost.

You know, that er, often his forms

take the shape of a figure seven.

And - or they look like things out of the natural world,

whether it's almost like plants or whether -

the ribcage of a whale or something

you might have seen in the Natural History Museum

[laughs] or something.

But there is this new vocabulary in architecture.

And then of course you've got the lovely forms of the bridges,

which are like musical instruments,

like lyres and harps on a giant scale,

with all these wonderful cables and cords

glistening in the sun or lit up at night.

You know, so there is a real thrill to these buildings,

which is maintained in the evening,

as well as during the day in different lights.

He introduces all these different,

like - almost like a very complicated maypole,

these wires twisting and turning around

as the bridge takes different angles.

And then he's done wonderful...

..wonderful tubular bridges.

He's done these arch brace truss and sometimes they're vertical,

sometimes they're leaning out or leaning in.

It is all very adventurous architecture.

And that is really what gives the excitement to...

..to the first encounter with any of his bridges,

is that it immediately seizes your eye.

And then as you go up to it,

you are walking into a piece of sculpture,

you know, which is constantly changing as you move across it.

There are certainly other wonderful bridge builders

but Calatrava will always delight you.

Narrator: The Swiss bridge engineer Robert Maillart

was one influence on Calatrava, but there were others.

In art, Calatrava loved the figures made

by the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

Now recognised as one of the foremost sculptors

of the 20th century.

- People like Giacometti have done, you see,

making these figures of man walking to see you or...

..or pointing like that, and always interestingly, you see?

'Mans' by Giacometti are always moving.

[soft piano music]

A walk like they used to walk 10,000 years ago.

[laughs]

Because you see the walking man, you know?

And, er, er, you see our body, the dimensions of our body,

are also almost the same.

Some of us are shorter or bigger but more or less it's the same.

These basical concepts are, erm...

very important.

In buildings, it's important to recall the sense

in the things we touch.

If it is a handrail. If it is a piece of marble.

If it is a light. If it is a seat.

If it is, you know, a shop where I enter to buy something,

if it is the dimension of a door,

if it is the relation between the dimension of a door,

the vestibule and the building opened.

But these things are all related to myself.

If I have the feeling, you know, the...the oculus is large,

it's not because it's this [laughs] something out of...

No, it is because I enter, there is a door,

there is a vestibule, and then when I enter there,

I get, oh, you see what I mean?

Or I come through the galleria with the processional space.

And this is the extraordinary thing, you see.

So, on the one hand, you work with this...matter,

you understand? Which it is almost human.

[stutters]

So you make a - you reference to the humanness, isn't it,

and at the other side, you work with a technique,

with our time, with the modernity,

with the speed, with the trains, with the subways, you see,

with 300,000 people passing through and all of that,

which it is an extraordinary challenge.

Narrator: In architecture, Calatrava

admired the work of Eero Saarinen.

The Finnish American who designed

Washington's Dulles International Airport

and the TWA Flight Centre at New York's Idlewild.

Opened in 1962, a year before the airport was renamed

JFK after President Kennedy

and now restored as a hotel.

[soft music]

Saarinen's approach was radically different

from what had gone before, with a dramatic roof,

innovations such as jetways, baggage carousels, and lounges.

The terminal was designed to welcome the jet age.

- Extraordinary architecture.

Extraordinary...manifest, you see, of fate in the future

and at the other side of art of our time.

You know, because they are pieces of art.

And...indeed, there is certainly, you see,

a... [stammers]

..a kind of um...

..let's say also a reference to the...

..to the work of Saarinen,

to see the idea of the TWA terminal

seems a little bit, bit like a bird, you know,

elevating from the ground.

With these very strong two legs in concrete,

this - who - and even the...the water spire,

you see, at the end, and all of that, and even the kerbs.

And also these - the sense almost of indefined space

at the interior with the poles, you see?

Where you do not know exactly where the space will finish,

you see? Because it - and giving the sense of elevation.

Many of those aspects I try in a way with all respect,

you understand what I mean?

All respect, not copy at all, you know?

But in a way, you see, I thought these are valuable references,

you see, that we should follow with a big difference.

It is the steel.

When there all is concrete, here is all steel.

And I know quite something about steel

because I have built 50 bridges, all of them in steel.

And many roads and all of that I think the steel

has until today never been in the place where it is now in.

[laughs] And had never been before in the place

where we put it at Ground Zero.

In the - you see these shapes, you know, these organic shapes,

it done with hard steel, and porting.

They make - some people ask me are they decorative?

What about - no, [laughs] they are porting.

You know, the arcs are porting, the beams are porting.

The whole thing is interrelated in an organic way

by the sense of carrying, you know, the slabs,

the gardens on top of it, or even the roof itself.

And you see it when the roof is - it gets opened.

Then you get a gap of 80 metres,

which it is 250, 260, er, feet.

[stammers]

And this gap is ported, you see, in the longitudinal way

through...an arc, er,

in the board on both sides, you see.

Who - and even compensated by the wing, er, by the wings,

you know? Work on delivering.

So, that finally the...the bending moment

at the feet of the legs are very small.

Because that they are also much smaller than up in the top.

So, there is a lot of a correlation

between form giving and static understanding.

To the service of an abstract idea, you know,

which it is the idea of creating a beautiful space, and this gap,

you see, who has a symbolic value.

[soft music]

- Great architecture down the ages

has always looked back as well as forward for inspiration.

And of course the Renaissance is the classic example of that.

And I think what's wonderful with Calatrava

is the way he actually does start with Saarinen

and that wonderful sculptural terminal, uh, for TWA.

What's interesting is that TWA

was very beautifully symmetrical.

And so although sometimes these forms look wild,

they are very disciplined,

and there is this discipline and rigour in Calatrava.

And he's got this wonderful use of symmetry,

but it never becomes monotonous.

It's always used to create vistas

and excitement in a building.

But it is all very disciplined.

And there's rhythm, there's perspective, you know,

all these wonderful basic elements of architecture

in space, you know, he is a master of them all.

[uplifting music]

He's introduced this wonderful drama, actually,

I think, into station building.

I mean, there have been several great ages of station buildings

in the Victorians with their great engineering.

But he with his stations like the one at, er, Lyon

which is a fabulous building,

has introduced this new vocabulary.

The light in his buildings is another thing that he -

on the whole, he tends to go for white concrete.

I mean, he loves his - he

believes in concrete as the material of...

..of the new century and the new age and he's...

..he's mastered the ability

to make the most beautiful concrete,

which is not only a lovely colour and smooth white.

But catches the light in this very beautiful way,

and it is the combination as in the 19th century

of both the light coming through the glass

and lighting up the concrete, which gives the stations

this wonderful sort of cathedral like feel

of being filled with light.

Narrator: In Zurich, Calatrava's admiration

for Eero Saarinen was evident

in his first infrastructure project,

The Stadelhofen railway station.

A commission that came out of a 1982 architecture competition.

Here, at the start of his career,

he had already worked out how to combine structural engineering

with the soaring and romantic shapes

that Saarinen had pioneered.

It may seem incredible that, with these high-tech projects,

Santiago Calatrava relies so much upon free hand drawing.

But he does.

A scheme for the reworking of Chicago's O'Hare Airport

started life on Calatrava's sketch pad.

Like the World Trade Center, his drawings and watercolours

were taken by others and turned into computer renders to tempt

the judges in Chicago but his ideas are firmly rooted in art.

And it works, this year his idea for O'Hare

was among the finalists in the design competition.

[soft music]

All these transport interchanges present a common problem,

how to update them while keeping the planes, and trains, running.

It was a challenge he would face 30 years later in New York.

Narrator: Zurich, where Santiago Calatrava lives and works,

holds clues to his thinking

behind the Transportation Hub at Ground Zero in Manhattan.

But they're not all easy to find.

At the University of Zurich, the Law Faculty

wanted to bring its libraries under one roof.

Calatrava designed a building within the original building,

a new library filling what had been a courtyard

but cleverly separated from it.

So that when you're inside you can read both old and new.

The parapets of the six oval rings hide the users

of this dramatic space, the students of the Law Faculty.

The narrow strips of maple so finely linked,

it's hard to see the joins give richness and warmth.

And the gaps between them absorb sound.

This scheme dates from 1989

but it contains one feature that would come to define

the New York Transportation Centre 25 years later, the roof.

[soft music]

Santiago Calatrava

gave the Zurich University Law Library, a skylight.

So that natural light

would filter into all corners of the courtyard.

Not an ordinary skylight,

one that had a curtain of collapsible blinds

that can be opened and closed hydraulically.

In New York Daniel Libeskind,

the master planner of the regeneration of Ground Zero,

had already conceived the idea of an open plaza.

A 'wedge of light' he called it, as a memorial

to the victims of the Twin Towers' attacks.

In the event that didn't go ahead.

But in his building now to be constructed

where Libeskind's plaza would have been.

Calatrava saw an opportunity to do something similar

using the glass roof of the Transportation Centre.

But it would mean going against Manhattan's famous grid pattern.

- This idea of the wedge of light

is an extraordinary idea.

And since, I am in a way transgressing

the wedge of light, I thought I could orient it, the building.

In a way that it could follow one of those diagonal,

was very close to the grid of New York.

But...the building in this case was lightly tilted.

But in order to cap the grid, I used the wings.

And did so, that the wings in plan beyond the referment

you know, the referent, you know,

to a bird or something like that.

But they are also strictly following the grid

when the building is tilted.

And these generate...

..then, the idea of making this opening.

Letting the light enter.

At, er, 10:29,

the light is going... is making... [stammers]

..let's say a way of light in the paving

from one end to another of the whole hall.

This appropriate because it's like

a pure architectural tribute.

No written, no words, it's just pure architecture.

It's light and matter, ordinated in a way

that in this particular moment, in this particular way,

even like we do in Stonehenge.

1,000 years of today even if...

[laughs]

..I hope that the building is still there, isn't it?

We'll remember, you see, in a way, in a mysterious way,

you know, this will happen, this in the...

11th of September.

Narrator: September 6th, 2005.

Santiago Calatrava's daughter, Sofia,

is given the day off school to launch two doves.

As they break ground

at the World Trade Center Transportation Hub.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton is here,

City Mayor Michael Bloomberg,

and the banner says, 'A soaring concept, an historic occasion.'

It was day one of a project

that would take more than 10 years to realise.

There was no question of stopping the trains,

so the station had to be built around them.

Security concerns meant the fins had to be redesigned,

made thicker.

There were other revisions and controversy over the cost,

doubling from the planned two billion dollars to four billion.

But there was affection among the workers responsible

for assembling this homage to the 21st century traveller.

Slowly, an unusual building emerged.

As the main hall came together,

the construction crews nicknamed it, 'The Oculus'

and the name stuck.

Santiago Calatrava had designed a central space

that was all white, like his most famous bridges.

330 feet long, 160 feet high.

'The New York Times' called it, 'breathtaking'.

It was a nod to the famous concourse at Grand Central

but with modern architecture using modern materials.

And he had contrived a progression

for those arriving and leaving.

Using an east-west corridor linked to the main hall.

All the time allowing users of the station

to see what was ahead.

- I arrive into a space who prepares me.

Then I am - the subway is passing through, and...

..and this compress me and then I enter into the oculus.

I mean, finally the whole job was to ordinate

those things in a way that these processional character appear.

We has no change of subway that was there.

Also the east-west corridor was part of the overall master plan.

It has also been there before.

The oculus is so located that you,

being in the east-west corridor you see all the way through.

Until the end of the oculus, which it is also an advantage.

Being that the height and the sequence

of the spaces in different heights, but still you see,

you see where you are going, it is not a labyrinthic feeling.

It is the east-west corridor, this galleria,

is part, a substantial part,

of the effect of one east-west corridor, two stations,

another type of face, and third, oculus.

You see, one, two, three.

I wanted to do something that really, that,

er, the quality of the overall promenade, you know.

That compels the people until the trains, isn't it?

This was one.

And, um, then you arrive into the oculus,

and the oculus was like an occlusion, you see?

Like suddenly, you see, you see, you have the feeling,

I am in a plaza of New York.

This was my ambition, although I am almost three levels

in the underground, isn't it?

And the idea of rising to the oculus and opening,

you know, up.

And seeing the transparency through the steel ribs,

and this sense of enormous space.

Very generous space, my opinion, a genuinely...a genuinely

New Yorker space, you see, it was like arriving to a place.

I am in New York.

What I am seeing is not a piece of steel

bolted to another piece of steel

or welded to another piece of steel. No.

It's something who is far beyond

the material, er, the material context.

As material as the architecture is...

[stutters]

..and...and...

..it comes to me the sense of... the musical part, you know?

If it was music, it will be very easy to explain that.

Because the music happens in a second, you understand,

and then disappear, and can move the people, isn't it?

They are melodies and music,

you know, who will touch the people deeply, you see?

And...[stammers]

..and architecture in a way as material as it is,

and as tangible it is, you see,

can do also very similar to the music.

Narrator: This may be the one project in his career

that has moved Santiago Calatrava more than any other.

The opportunity to create what he now calls,

'A Monument to Life.'

The privilege of working in a city

where his hero Eero Saarinen,

created exciting shapes 50 years earlier.

The realisation of his art in built form,

his gift to the public realm

of one of the world's most iconic cities.

All these things came together

in the World Trade Centre Transportation Hub.

- There is something I hope, I hope in this type of approach

and in this building who comes against to life.

It is a recall to the extraordinary work

of people like Saarinen.

Was an epoch.

Or even before Grand Central.

Or even before the Brooklyn Bridge or things like that.

So there is a spirit.

It is a spirit who - the...

..finally the only constant is New York.

Do you understand? It is New York.

So, there are places where the ground is fertile,

and it is ready, you know, to do these kind of gestures.

Of course you need a special circumstance.

You need - speaking from the Greeks,

you know, going back, a little bit the sense of the tragedy.

And September 11th was an enormous tragedy, isn't it?

So you need the people in front of the tragedy,

they don't submit, they don't say oh, my goodness, no.

They say the life goes ahead.

We have to rebuild it and even like the ancient Greeks,

you know, we will rebuild the Parthenon

and it will be even better.

And...and the ground is New York, you know,

which it is not only an important city

in the United States but in a way is a kind of world capital.

[soft music]

In French there is a word that I think works very well.

Is, amateur.

[laughs] Amateur,

means not necessarily dilettante, you understand?

It's not dilettante. It's amateur.

Amateur is somebody who lives or loves...no, who loves

the - I mean, ame, ame means you know, to love, isn't it?

And amateur is somebody who loves.

So I love sculpture, I love engineering,

I love architecture [laughs]

and I try to deal, you see,

with all the three as there was...

a single thing serving each other.

Eventually all of them serving to the art of architecture.

Captioned by Ai-Media ai-media.tv

Narrator: Next time, 35 years after it was

left for dead, Battersea Power Station is being restored.

Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott,

the man who created the red telephone kiosk,

this London landmark was rescued by a Malaysian consortium which

selected architects WilkinsonEyre

to give it a new life.

The most incredible thing about it is the sheer scale of it.

This absolutely enormous space.

And then there's always more to discover.

You go in a bit further or you go up

into one of either switch houses on either side,

then you find those extraordinary control rooms.

You know, they're sort of beautifully designed.

Everything very carefully designed and worked through.

It's just an awesome space.