Santiago Calatrava Collects Critics as Well as Fans - NYTimes.

com

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/arts/design/santiago-calatrav...

September 24, 2013

A Star Architect Leaves Some Clients Fuming

By SUZANNE DALEY

VALENCIA, Spain For a while, this sprawling Mediterranean city embraced Santiago Calatravas architecture with gusto. In a dried-up riverbed, Mr. Calatrava built and built, eventually filling 86 acres with his radical, and some say awe-inspiring, designs. But these days, even as Mr. Calatravas eye-catching PATH station creeps toward completion in Lower Manhattan, he is often cast as a villain here in Valencia. One local politician runs a Web site called Calatravatelaclava, which loosely translates as, Calatrava bleeds you dry. Originally budgeted at 300 million euros (about $405 million), the riverbed complex, called the City of Arts and Sciences the worlds largest collection of Mr. Calatravas work, which includes a performance hall, a bridge, a planetarium, an opera house, a science museum, a covered walkway and acres of reflecting pools has cost nearly three times that much, money the region never had. Ignacio Blanco, the member of the provincial Parliament who started the Web site, has unleashed a flood of information about the complex during the past year, concluding that Valencia still owes 700 million euros (about $944 million) on it. Mr. Calatrava was paid approximately 94 million euros (about $127 million) for his work. How could that be, Mr. Blanco asks, when the opera house included 150 seats with obstructed views? Or when the science museum was initially built without fire escapes or elevators for the disabled? How can you make mistakes like that? asked Mr. Blanco, a member of the small opposition United Left party here, who said millions were spent to fix such errors. He was paid even when repairing his own mistakes. Along with Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Renzo Piano and Norman Foster, Mr. Calatrava swept to prominence in an era of showstopping architecture. Across the globe, he has designed dozens of structures, almost invariably white, including the Lige-Guillemins railway station in Belgium; the Turning Torso skyscraper in Malmo, Sweden; and the Milwaukee Art Museum, with its mechanical roof. A Devotion to Form
1 de 5 25/09/13 07:04

Santiago Calatrava Collects Critics as Well as Fans - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/arts/design/santiago-calatrav...

Admirers say that Mr. Calatravas designs are both delicate and powerful. They liken his buildings to giant sculptures and praise his stubborn devotion to form. And they point out that star architects often come with hefty price tags, partly because their designs frequently call for intricate, complicated construction. Almost all have at least one project that seemed to spin horribly out of control and it is rarely easy to determine exactly who might be at fault and for what. But in numerous interviews, other architects, academics and builders say that Mr. Calatrava is amassing an unusually long list of projects marred by cost overruns, delays and litigation. It is hard to find a Calatrava project that has not been significantly over budget. And complaints abound that he is indifferent to the needs of his clients. Just last month a Dutch councilor in Haarlemmermeer, near Amsterdam, urged his colleagues to take legal action because the three bridges the architect designed for the town cost twice the budgeted amount and then millions more in upkeep since they opened in 2004. Mr. Calatrava is already in court over a footbridge in Venice, a winery in the lava region of Spain and a massive exhibition and conference center in Oviedo, Spain. In Bilbao, Spain, there have been problems with a bridge and an airport. What you see over and over again is that rather than searching for functionality or customer satisfaction, he aims for singularity, said Jess Caada Merino, the president of Bilbaos architects association. The problem is that Calatrava is above and beyond the client. Mr. Calatrava is likely to come under renewed scrutiny in New York as building continues on one of his latest projects, the new PATH train station at ground zero. It is expected to open in 2015 but is six years behind schedule and will cost $4 billion, twice the original budget. Critics of the project, commissioned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, find the final price tag hard to believe. (In January 2012 an independent audit of the Port Authority concluded that the agency was a challenged and dysfunctional organization.) But several executives who have been involved in construction at the World Trade Center site, who did not want to speak on the record because of their relationship with the project, said Mr. Calatravas designs were problematic, too, calling for hugely difficult construction, including a vast underground chamber. In addition, they said, he demanded that surrounding buildings house all the stations mechanical elements, like ventilation, which complicated construction and called for time-consuming coordination. The Port Authority declined to discuss the cost overruns and issued a one-sentence statement: Early estimates for the transportation hub were based on conceptual designs and were therefore unrealistic.

2 de 5

25/09/13 07:04

Santiago Calatrava Collects Critics as Well as Fans - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/arts/design/santiago-calatrav...

Here in Valencia, the regional governments spending spree and Mr. Calatravas work are being dissected and disparaged regularly as local politicians fight over who is responsible for the projects pile of debt. Regional officials had hoped that the complex would transform this city into a tourist destination, in much the way that Frank Gehrys Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao put that city on the map, and they continue to defend the investment. But they appeared to draw a line last year when the smooth skin of Mr. Calatravas opera house some call it the Darth Vader helmet began noticeably wrinkling just six years after the building opened. Regional officials said they expected the responsible party Mr. Calatrava, the construction companies or a combination to pay for repairs or face a lawsuit. They are working to determine what repairs are necessary. When asked about Mr. Calatravas projects, his office in New York, where he lives, said he was unavailable for an interview. He did, however, issue a statement: My goal is always to create something exceptional that enhances cities and enriches the lives of the people who live and work in them, he said. He added, It has been a privilege to work on these projects, all of which are completed to the highest standards. In recent months he has defended his work in writing in various publications, saying that his fees in Valencia were fair because they covered 20 years of work and included some management of the sites. In a brief interview in Architectural Record magazine last year, he noted that clients were satisfied enough to come back for more. Among them are the cities of Dublin and Dallas. In that article, Mr. Calatrava called the uproar over his work in Valencia a political maneuver by the Communists. But other cities may be reluctant to hire Mr. Calatrava again. The Bridge of Broken Legs In Bilbao he designed a footbridge with a glass tile surface that allowed it to be lighted from below, keeping its sweeping arches free of lampposts. But in a city that gets a lot of rain and occasional snow, pedestrians keep falling on the slippery surface. City officials say some 50 citizens have injured themselves, sometimes breaking legs or hips, on the bridge since it opened in 1997, and the glass bricks frequently crack and need to be replaced. Two years ago the city resorted to laying a huge black rubber carpet across the bridge. It loses the beauty, said Ibon Areso, the acting mayor of Bilbao. But we cant keep paying people who slip and fall. In a recent storm the carpet flipped up, knocking several people off their feet.

3 de 5

25/09/13 07:04

Santiago Calatrava Collects Critics as Well as Fans - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/arts/design/santiago-calatrav...

On the outskirts of Bilbao, Mr. Calatrava was commissioned to build an airport terminal that has been nicknamed La Paloma because of its resemblance to a dove taking flight. But when it opened in 2000, the airport lacked an arrivals hall. Passengers moved through the customs and baggage area directly to the sidewalk where they had to wait in the cold. The airport authorities have since installed a glass wall to shelter them. In June a Spanish court ruled that Mr. Calatrava and his team had to pay to 3.3 million euros (about $4.5 million) to settle a dispute in Oviedo, where the construction of the conference center at one point suffered a spectacular collapse. In the lava region, a winery is suing Mr. Calatrava over an undulating roof he designed a dozen years ago. Problems with leaks, which ruin the humidity control that is vital to wine, have never been resolved. The owners of the winery, Domecq, are asking for 2 million euros (about $2.7 million) to hire fresh architects and engineers to devise a solution. Auditors in Venice are taking Mr. Calatrava and several engineers to court because of cost overruns and what they see as an excessive need for repairs on Mr. Calatravas Ponte della Costituzione, a footbridge across the Grand Canal. The regions audit court has asked Mr. Calatrava to return more than a million euros. The first hearing is scheduled for November. Meanwhile, Venice is also asking judicial authorities to find out whether Mr. Calatrava was responsible for some cost overruns because he did not promptly supply the drawings needed to begin finding a builder. Grand Conceptions As for Valencias cost overruns, the politician Mr. Blanco said in a recent interview that one contributing issue might be that Mr. Calatravas designs appear to include few details. Other architects, they know exactly the door handles they want, and where to buy and at what cost, Mr. Blanco said. But Calatrava is the opposite. His projects do not have this degree of precision. If you look at the files on the aquarium, which was built by someone else, they are fat. But there are just a couple of pages on the Calatrava projects. Valencia, where Mr. Calatrava was born, has a lot to regret now that Spains economic boom is over. The regional government, led by the center-right Popular Party, spent, for instance, about $180 million on a new airport that has not managed to attract any airlines. And some critics see Mr. Calatravas City of Arts and Sciences as another monument to the governments extravagance, not his. Did Valencia really need an opera house, they ask? But other critics scoff at Mr. Calatravas landscaped gardens beneath metal arches that become so hot no vines will entwine them. The roof of the performance hall leaks, they say. The opera was once flooded in a storm. Didnt he know he was working in a riverbed?

4 de 5

25/09/13 07:04

Santiago Calatrava Collects Critics as Well as Fans - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/arts/design/santiago-calatrav...

One Valencia architect, Vicente Blasco, has taken Mr. Calatrava to task in a local newspaper for even trying to cover the steel sides of the opera house with a mosaic of broken white tiles. (That touch was Mr. Calatravas nod to another noted architect of Spain, Antoni Gaud, who favored mosaics.) The flourish may have been a nice idea, Mr. Blasco said, but it was absurd. The buckling that is now occurring was predictable. On days with a rapid change in temperature, he wrote, the steel and tile contract and expand at different rates. Maybe someone sold him on some special adhesive, but I dont see it, Mr. Blasco said in an interview. It is so basic. No one would expect that to work.
Rachel Chaundler in Spain and Elisabetta Povoledo in Rome contributed reporting.

5 de 5

25/09/13 07:04