An early morning, passed at home
«Every morning, my day begins exactly at six,» says Affable Calatrava. «I prepare coffee, I feed Stella, the dog of our family, and then let her wander around the patio.» It is these morning obligations, explains the architect, which keep him with their feet on the ground and focused on the routine: «Then, I go by bicycle 20 minutes to a local tennis club near Lake Zurich», and after playing an hour, he returns home by bicycle. Once bathed and breakfast, Calatrava begins his first save of creative rigor: «On the third floor of my house I have a ATELIER which I use to paint from nine to noon. «The Spanish architect is as skilled with the brush on the canvas as with the pencil on paper.
Walking through your workshop is to travel your mind. You can see paintings of a bull loading, a skeletal hand, suspended bodies in the middle of dance and a dove in full flight: «I find a lot of beauty and inspiration in the natural world», admits Calatrava. This inspiration is evident to anyone who has looked at one of its finished structures, which makes Calatrava an alchemist rather than an architect. It has a way to manipulate steel, glass and cement to turn them into something soft, even ephemeral. The examples abound: a tower that looks like a torso (Malmö, Sweden), a communications building that remembers a flame (Barcelona), a museum that remembers a bird flying (Milwaukee), a pedestrian bridge that looks more like a couple of tango dancers than a simple structure (Buenos Aires).
In the study at 1 in the afternoon
After letting the brushes dry, calatrava lunch down. Then, he is less than 10 minutes by car from his house to the studio, which reaches around 1 in the afternoon. The work space is in A residence of the early twentieth century near the northern end of Lake Zurich. This space, which was owned by an outstanding local brewing family, is where the architect has been working since 2002. Currently, the house turned into study is a mixture of charm of the old world and of Swiss organization without complexes.
It is in this 30 employee office where Calatrava embarks on what he declares The daily work of an architect: «As I am Training Engineer, the material parts of the architecture are very clear to me. But there is much more to consider. A successful architect has to be like the director of an orchestra. He is in search of a good contractor. You are working with the unions, in working with finance, in working with the limitations of the land, the limitations of local zoning laws. These tasks can be considered worldly, but its importance cannot be exaggerated. «