Santiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish architect, sculptor and structural engineer whose principal office is in Zürich, Switzerland. Classed now among the elite designers of the world, he has offices in Zürich, Paris, Valencia, and New York City. Calatrava was born in Benimàmet, an old municipality now integrated as an urban part of Valencia, Spain, where he pursued his undergraduate architecture degree at the Polytechnic University of Valencia along with a post-graduate course in urbanism. During his schooldays, he also undertook independent projects with a group of fellow... students, bringing out two books on the vernacular architecture of Valencia and Ibiza Following graduation in 1975, he enrolled in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland, for graduate work in civil engineering. In 1981, after completing his doctoral thesis, "On the Foldability of Space Frames", he started his architecture and engineering practice. Calatrava's early career was largely dedicated to bridges and train stations, with designs that elevated the status of civil engineering projects to new heights.
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