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Santiago Calatrava was born in Valencia, Spain in 1951. He graduated from the Institute of Architecture in Valencia and from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Calatrava's style has been heralded as bridging the division between structural engineering and architecture. Most of his early realized work was in Switzerland and Spain, where he concentrated mostly on bridges and train stations at the time for which designs won several awards. His projects and buildings are now diverse ranging from skyscrapers to townhouses and are hailed for their unique aesthetic qualities and form. Calatrava often uses exaggerated or distorted parabolic arches to increase the sculptural effect of his bridges and buildings and tends to avoid established form. Today, he is a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council. In 2005, Caltrava was awarded the esteemed Eugene McDermott Award by the Council of the Arts of MIT. Prior to Eugene McDermott Award, he received the prestigious Gold Medal from the Institution of Structural Engineers in 1992. Calatrava has had exhibitions of his designs all over the world with numerous major exhibits of his work at Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
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