Santiago Calatrava

Though I love the arts with all my heart - paintings, sculpture, theatre, and music - and think they are among the biggest achievements we humans can do, I am really convinced that architecture is among the most important.

Building a bridge, in my opinion, is a symbolic gesture, linked with the needs of people who cross over it, and with the idea of overcoming or surmounting obstacles. A modern bridge can also be a work of art. It helps to shape our daily lives and becomes a vital experience for all the people who use it.

There is one way that architecture is superior to sculpture, and that is scale. You can walk into a building and have it all around you.

I paint and work as a sculptor, and I see architecture as an art... If you follow this approach you can use techniques to the service of man and to the service of an artistic idea, and beauty.

The architect works for so many years building it, and the moment you deliver it to the people is the moment when you are unnecessary.

When I work on sculpture, I don't have to worry about function. When I work on a piece of architecture, I must think about function all the time.

Architecture is one of the art forms best able to improve and revitalise cities both artistically and functionally.

Architecture is a code. It's a pure code, derived from the dimensions of nature.

When I was in architecture school, I became curious about the exact mathematics, physics, and construction of the great structures I had been studying. I wanted to know how these amazing things would work: the Pantheon, the dome of Michelangelo, the dome of Brunelleschi. So I decided to study civil engineering.

Architecture, like dance, is also a language - one that everybody understands.