Santiago Calatrava

The Spanish Ministry of Housing presented the 2005 award to the most internationally acclaimed Valencian architect, one with offices in his native city as well as Paris and Zurich, where he opened his first studio. With an architecture degree from the Technical University of Valencia, he finished his studies with a PhD in engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, in addition to studying sculpture in Valencia. His study of engineering has given him a natural ease and affinity for the construction of bridges, exemplified by the Bach de Roda in Barcelona, or the one that he is currently building in Venice, one of the few constructions that has been built in this city-museum since the beginning of the 20th century. In 1991, he moved to Valencia to coordinate the building of the spectacular City of Sciences, his most ambitious project in Spain to date. Two of the outstanding pieces to come out of his romance with the United States, where his work has received numerous distinctions, include the Milwaukee Art Museum and the currently underway Transportation Hub project for Ground Zero in New York..