Santiago Calatrava Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts 1999

Santiago Calatrava Valls (Benimamet, Valencia, Spain, 1951)  obtained a degree in Fine Arts from the universities of Valencia and Paris. He was awarded a degree in Architecture in 1974 and subsequently graduated in Civil Engineering in 1979. Besides his acclaimed work as an architect in several countries, he has also played an outstanding role in teaching as professor at the Institute of Construction Statics in Zurich. Another outstanding facet of his work is sculpture, with several shows such as those at the Museum of Design, Zurich in 1985 and the Royal Institute of British Architects, London in 1992.

On a professional level, he has Architecture and Engineering studies in Paris, Zurich and Valencia. He has undertaken large-scale works, especially bridges, stations, airports and exhibition centres. He is the author of such well-known works as the Alamillo Bridge in Seville, one of the bridges over Venice’s Grand Canal, the Montjuic Telecommunicaitons Tower in Barcelona and the Lyon-Satolas High Speed Railway Station in France. He also designed the Tenerife Auditorium, the new airport terminal in Sondica and the City of Sciences and Arts in Valencia, in collaboration with Félix Candela. He has several projects currently in portfolio such as the transport hub under the new World Trade Center in New York, as well as a skyscraper and the building of a cable car between Manhattan and Brooklyn. In 1993, the prestigious Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA) held an exhibition exclusively dedicated to his work.  He has also had shows at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIVA), in 1992, at the Gammel Dok Architecture Centre in Copenhague, at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Member of the Europa Akademie and of the Fazlur Rhaman Vihan International, he has received a great many awards, such as the Augusto Perret Award from the International Union of Architects, the international “Vereinigungg fur Brückenhan und Hochabn” Award from Switzerland, the Fritz Schumacher Award from Germany, the 1988 FAD award, the 1994 Urban Design Award conferred by the City of Toronto (Canada), the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts from the Spanish Ministry of Culture in 1996, the Gold Medal from The Concrete Society in 1999, the 2006 Leadership Prize from the New York Building Congress for his work in the city’s ground zero site, the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts from the Royal Academies of San Carlos in 2002 and the 2005 Gold Medal from the US Architects Institute. Santiago Calatrava is also a member of the International Academy of Architecture and holds honorary doctorates from twenty universities, including Valencia Polytechnic, the University of Seville, Heriot-Watt University (Scotland), University College Salford (England), the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow), Delft University of Technology (Holland), Milwaukee School of Engineering (Wisconsin, USA), the Universitá degli Studi di Cassino (Italy), Lund University (Sweden), the Universitá degli Studi di Ferrara (Italy) and Oxford University, among others.