Santiago Calatrava : Stadelhofen Train Station, Zurich

It is not just by chance that Calatrava's international career is closely linked with Stadelhofen S-Bahn station. It is true that he had successfully realized remarkable buildings before 1983/84, but, as well as the impressively unified combination of structure & architectural idea, ultimately -- & the example of Stadelhofen in particular shows this -- it was the successful implementation of a concept placing a new interpretation on the city that established Calatrava's present fame. As usual Calatrava's work brought more or less zealous imitators on to the scene, but they did not succeed in moving beyond isolated imitations to anything like a comparable overall effect: an indication of the fact that construction methods & choice of materials are of small value without an urban planning concept based in time. It is the solution in terms of urban development in particular that shows Calatrava's undoubted merit & the special quality of his unreactionary & forward-thinking contribution to the Zurich cityspace. The face of the city has not only been transformed on the micro-level of detail, but also as a result of his intervention on the macro-level -- the zero & starting point of urban reality -- in the direction of a post-industrial & urbanized open society. This urban revolution, grasped by Calatrava with a sleep walker's certainty & implemented monumentally by means of the planning methods handed down to him, now induces perplexity in urban planners, thus tarred with neo-Rationalism & Deconstructivism in two respects. Calatrava's Stadelhofen is the beginning of a U-topia: it is a non-place, but creates a new urban quality; it is a non-type, but creates a different notion of architecture & city; it stands for perception of the dissolution of a harmonious, compact city shape & for the conflict increasingly occurring in cities between reactionary city-core & avant-garde concepts of urban nebula.Calatrava, Santiago is the author of 'Santiago Calatrava : Stadelhofen Train Station, Zurich', published 1993 under ISBN 9783803027108 and ISBN 3803027101.