Santiago Calatrava ─ Milwaukee Art Museum, Quadracci Pavilion

Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava has achieved considerable international acclaim in recent years with his feats of engineering and his architectural constructions. His designs for the major stadium at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and his selection as the architect of the highly anticipated World Trade Center Transportation Hub in lower Manhattan have recently put him before the eyes of the world, but Calatrava first established his reputation as the preeminent engineer of our time with a remarkable series of bridges designed for cities around the globe - Barcelona, Bilbao, Merida, Seville, and Valencia in Spain, as well as Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Orleans, and Venice.
While Calatrava's inventive treatment of structure and form has continued to put his new creations on the list of the world's most arresting buildings, his design of the Quadracci Pavilion, a major addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, was his first completed project in the United States. This work, which Time named the best new design project of 2001, encompasses an elegant cable-stayed bridge, new galleries, and other facilities for the museum, and, most dramatic of all, a movable, louvered sunscreen that lifts like wings above the museum's soaring reception hall. This illustrated monograph - with color photography by the Chicago-based firm of Hedrich Blessing - is a detailed exploration of a celebrated American architectural masterpiece.

Cheryl Kent is an architecture writer who lives in Chicago. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Metropolis, World Architecture, and many other publications. She is the author of Rizzoli’s The Nature of Dwellings: The Architecture of David Hovey. David Gordon is director of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Jeff Millies is a staff photographer at Hedrich Blessing Photographers.