The Secret of Philanthropy
By Philip Jodidio. Excerpt from the book "Santiago Calatrava. Complete Works 1979-2007"
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In 1914, in his book Les Cathédrales de France, Rodin wrote, 'The sculptor only attains great expression when he gives all his attention to the harmonic play of light and shadow, just as the architect does.' The fact that one of the most famous phrases of modern architecture was inspired not by an architect but by a sculptor underlines the significance of art." Aside from his consistent interest in art, Santiago Calatrava has also brought a related passion to his own very personal definition of architecture-that of movement: implied but also real, that is to say physical motion. From the early folding doors of his Ernsting's Warehouse (Coesfeld-Lette, Germany, 1983-85) to the more recent 115-ton Burke Brise Soleil (Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee,Wisconsin, 1994-2001), he has come back again and again, in his sculpture and his architecture, to the unusual concept of repetitive, physical movement.Why? "There is a cinematic element in 20thcentury art," replies Calatrava. "Artists like Alexander Calder, Naum Gabo or Moholy-Nagy created sculptures that move. I love their work and it gives me a great emotion. My doctoral thesis 'On the Foldability of Frames' had to do with the fact that a geometric figure can be reduced from three dimensions to two and ultimately to just one. Take a polyhedron and collapse it, making it into a planar surface. Another transformation reduces it to a single line, a single dimension. You can view this as a problem of mathematics or topology. All the mystery of the omnipresent Platonic solids is summed up in the polyhedron. After thinking about these questions, I looked at ancient sculpture in a different light.Works such as the Discobolus by Myron create a tension based on an instant of movement, and that is how I became interested in the problem of time, time as a variable. Einstein said 'God does not play dice with the Universe,' and so it became apparent to me that everything is related to mathematics and the unique dimension of time. Then I thought about statics (the branch of physics concerned with physical systems in static equilibrium) and realized that there is nothing static about them. Everything is potential movement.Newton's second law of motion states that the acceleration of an object is dependent upon two variables: the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object. Mass and acceleration are related, and thus there is time in force. I realized that architecture is full of things that move, from doors to furniture. Architecture itself moves and with a little luck becomes a beautiful ruin. Everything changes, everything dies, and there is an existential meaning in cyclical movements. I wanted to make a door of my own, one that would have a poetic meaning and transform itself into a figure in space, and that is how the Ernstings project came about."
Page [1] [2] [3]
Page [1] [2] [3]
In 1914, in his book Les Cathédrales de France, Rodin wrote, 'The sculptor only attains great expression when he gives all his attention to the harmonic play of light and shadow, just as the architect does.' The fact that one of the most famous phrases of modern architecture was inspired not by an architect but by a sculptor underlines the significance of art." Aside from his consistent interest in art, Santiago Calatrava has also brought a related passion to his own very personal definition of architecture-that of movement: implied but also real, that is to say physical motion. From the early folding doors of his Ernsting's Warehouse (Coesfeld-Lette, Germany, 1983-85) to the more recent 115-ton Burke Brise Soleil (Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee,Wisconsin, 1994-2001), he has come back again and again, in his sculpture and his architecture, to the unusual concept of repetitive, physical movement.Why? "There is a cinematic element in 20thcentury art," replies Calatrava. "Artists like Alexander Calder, Naum Gabo or Moholy-Nagy created sculptures that move. I love their work and it gives me a great emotion. My doctoral thesis 'On the Foldability of Frames' had to do with the fact that a geometric figure can be reduced from three dimensions to two and ultimately to just one. Take a polyhedron and collapse it, making it into a planar surface. Another transformation reduces it to a single line, a single dimension. You can view this as a problem of mathematics or topology. All the mystery of the omnipresent Platonic solids is summed up in the polyhedron. After thinking about these questions, I looked at ancient sculpture in a different light.Works such as the Discobolus by Myron create a tension based on an instant of movement, and that is how I became interested in the problem of time, time as a variable. Einstein said 'God does not play dice with the Universe,' and so it became apparent to me that everything is related to mathematics and the unique dimension of time. Then I thought about statics (the branch of physics concerned with physical systems in static equilibrium) and realized that there is nothing static about them. Everything is potential movement.Newton's second law of motion states that the acceleration of an object is dependent upon two variables: the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object. Mass and acceleration are related, and thus there is time in force. I realized that architecture is full of things that move, from doors to furniture. Architecture itself moves and with a little luck becomes a beautiful ruin. Everything changes, everything dies, and there is an existential meaning in cyclical movements. I wanted to make a door of my own, one that would have a poetic meaning and transform itself into a figure in space, and that is how the Ernstings project came about."
Page [1] [2] [3]
Santiago Calatrava, Complete Works 1979-2007
Hardcover, 30.8 x 39 cm (12.1 x 15.4 in.), 536 pages
$ 150.00
$ 150.00
Master of Form: Santiago Calatrava’s fusion of architecture, art and engineering (Complete Works 1979-2007)
Sundial Footbridge, Redding, CA, USA, 1997-2004