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Santiago Calatrava: audacious architecture with laminated glass

Calatrava has gained an international reputation for integrating technology and aesthetics to produce dynamic structural forms that challenge traditional architectural and engineering concepts. He is famous throughout Europe for elegant bridges and public buildings that are descendents, in their different ways, of London's nineteenth-century steel and glass Crystal Palace, the greenhouse-style exhibition space that signalled the beginning of pure engineering as a new architectural form.

Many of Calatrava's creations are open structures that use laminated glass in daring and dramatic applications where "an apparent disequilibrium or rather a sense of frozen movement is heightened by the lightness of the structure," as Philip Jodidio writes in his book on the architect.

The Staedelhofen Railway Station in Zurich,Switzerland (1990) has a graceful, curving canopy of laminated glass developed with counterpoised steel.

Above the station's original retaining wall, a promenade with a laminated glass pergola runs its full length, enhanced by a cable trellis to create a transparent green canopy that relates to the green of the 19th century area behind the station. This softens the station's intrusion into an environment that includes mature trees.

The transparent laminated glass canopy extending the entire length of the open platform ensures both the spaciousness of the platform area and a maximum of light filtering down to the passage below. The canopy is supported on steel flanges arranged along a torsion tube. Placed asymmetrically to enhance the space, these inclined and splayed supports are also of welded plate. The curved laminated glass canopy is the main ordering element that defines all the varied neighbouring structures. Aerodynamic tests ensured the resistance of the laminated glass to the slipstream wind from passing double-decker TGV trains.

St Exupéry airport station, Lyon, France (1994): a signature Calatrava roof and façade using concrete and laminated glass, denser at midpoint and more transparent at the sides.

Campo Volatin Footbridge, Bilbao, Spain (1997)
This pedestrian bridge links Campo Volatin Street in downtown Bilbao (Spain) across the River Nervion to Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao Museum. Floating 8.5 metres over the river, with a width between 6.5 and 7.5 metres, the board's deck is built of translucent laminated glass. A galvanized steel grid composed of 41 shaped steel ribs with variable sections runs along the outside of the glass flooring and supports the stainless steel profiles. Lighting plays a critical role. The lighting fixtures were specially designed by Santiago Calatrava and are located between the steel ribs, illuminating the floor from underneath. Additional lighting is paced in the handrails, stairs and ramps.

The Campo Volatin Footbridge in Bilbao, Spain (1997) with its transparent laminated glass walkway is just a short walk along the river from Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao Museum.

Calatrava: "The Campo Volatin bridge is a pronounced juxtaposition of materials. The translucent deck with a structural laminated glass surface is of tighter radius than its supporting cradle, which in turn is reinforced by a gently inflected steel tube placed at right angles to the embankment and audaciously carried by concrete arms extending from the approached structure. Laminated glass is used in the deck of the bridge or aesthetic and artistic reasons, so that the bridge can be illuminated from below. Consequently, the bridge floor becomes the source of lighting and the use of aerial lighting fixtures is avoided. The use of laminated glass also lends the bridge a feeling of lightness."

Sweeping laminated glass canopies for the Orient Station, Lisbon, Portugal (1998).

Orient Station, Lisbon, Portugal (1998)
The Orient Station, originally built for Lisbon's hosting of the World Fair in 1998, is today one of Europe's most comprehensive transport nodes - an important interchange for high-speed intercity trains, rapid regional rail services and a tram and metro network.

The sweeping laminated glass canopies of the station's bus terminal rise up to cover the elevated gallery that provides covered access to the station. This gallery, with its translucent laminated glass block paving, is treated as an axial ordering element that runs through the entire complex from east to west. Horizontal order is enhanced by the feeling of spaciousness, transparency and ease of orientation, thanks to the use of laminated glass.

Milwaukee Museum of Art, Wisconsin, USA (2000)
The Milwaukee Art Museum that overlooks Lake Michigan was, until 2000, made up of two structures designed in 1957 by Eero Saarinen and in 1975 by David Kahler respectively. Calatrava said: "The Saarinen-Kahler enemble is notable for its massive character. It is a concrete structure with rectangular geometry, connected to the city by a concrete bridge. However, despite its growing importance, the museum lacked architectural identity and functional clarity." The Museum's new pavilion by Calatrava takes the form of a ship and is made of concrete, steel and laminated glass. In particular, a linear wing made of laminated glass and stainless steel with a lamella roof is set at a right angle to Saarinen's original structure.

From the inside looking out through the brise-soleil at the Milwaukee Art Museum (2000).

The new pavilion features a spectacular kinetic structure: a brise-soleil with louvers that open and close like the wings of a great bird. When open, the shape of the structure also becomes a sign, set against the backdrop of the lake, to herald the inauguration of new exhibitions. The brise-soleil can let huge amounts of natural daylight into the pavilion's main hall. However, if wind speeds reach over 40 mph, a computerized system will make it automatically close.