ALVAR HENRICK AALTO

(1898-1976), Finnish architect, one of the 20th centurys foremost architects and designers, who combined in his buildings and furnishings clear functionalism with uncommon grace and warmth. Aalto was born February 3,1898, in Kuortane, and graduated (1921) from the Helsinki Polytechnic School. His first buildings to gain wide acclaim were a newspaper office and plant (1929-30), in Turku, notable for the use of tapered columns to support the pressroom roof, and the superbly sited Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatorium (1929-33), in which the patientsbuilding provides, along with the most advanced hospital technology, Such amenities as sun-lit balconies with a fine view. For this and for many other buildings, Aalto and his wife, Aino Marsio, also designed all furnishings and fittings, often entirely of laminated wood. In 1935 they founded Artek, a firm that continues to produce innovative furnishings

ALVAR HENRICK AALTO

TURUN SANOMAT NEWSPAPER AND OFFICE BUILDING IN TURKU

LAMINATED WOOD FURNITURE

PAIMIO TUBERCULOSIS SANATORIUM

BERNINI GIANLORENZO
Gianlorenzo Bernini, full name Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), the single most important artistic talent of the Italian baroque. Although most significant as a sculptor, he was also highly gifted as an architect; painter; draftsman; designer of stage sets, fireworks displays, and funeral trappings; and playwright. His art is the quintessence of high baroque energy and robustness. His ability to suggest textures of skin or cloth as well as to capture emotion and movement in sculpture was uncanny. Bernini reformed a number of sculptural genres, including the portrait bust, the fountain, and the tomb. His influence was widespread throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and was felt by such European masters as Pierre Puget, Pietro Bracci, and Andreas Schlter. Bernini's life was dominated by his work, and his biography can be traced through the immense number of projects he undertook. His career developed almost entirely in Rome, although he was born in Naples. His father, Pietro Bernini, a talented sculptor of the late Mannerist style, was his son's first teacher. Young Gianlorenzo soon surpassed his father in excellence, however, as is known from the principal sources of information on Bernini: the biography by Filippo Baldinucci in 1682 and the biography by the artist's son Domenico in 1713.

BERNINI GIANLORENZO
Many of Bernini's early sculptures were inspired by Hellenistic. The Goat Amalthea Nursing the Infant Zeus and a Young Satyr (1609, Galleria Borghese, Rome) typifies the classical taste of the youthful sculptor. Group sculptures by earlier masters such as Giambologna were noted for their Mannerist multiple views. Bernini's sculpture groups of the 1620s, however, such as the Abduction of Proserpina (1621-1622, Galleria Borghese, Rome) present the spectator with a single primary view while sacrificing none of the drama inherent in the scene. During the 1620s, Bernini also executed his first architectural projects, the facade for the church of Santa Bibiana (1624-1626) in Rome, and the creation of the magnificent baldachin (1624-1633), or altar canopy, over the high altar of Saint Peter's. The latter commission was given to Bernini by Pope Urban VIII, the first of seven pontiffs for whom he worked.

This project, a masterful feat of engineering, architecture, and sculpture, was the first of a number of monumental undertakings for Saint Peter's. Bernini later created the tombs (1628-1647 and 1671-1678, respectively; Saint Peter's) of Urban VIII and Alexander VII that, in their use of active threedimensional figures, differ markedly from the purely architectural approach to the sepulchral monument taken by previous artists. Bernini's immense Cathedra Petri (Chair of Saint Peter, 1657-1666), in the apse of Saint Peter's, employs marble, gilt bronze, and stucco in a splendid crescendo of motion, made all the more dramatic by the golden oval window in its center that becomes the focal point of the entire basilica.

BERNINI GIANLORENZO
Bernini was the first sculptor to realize the dramatic potential of light in a sculptural complex. This was even more fully realized in his famous masterpiece Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1645-1652, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome), in which the sun's rays, coming from an unseen source, illuminate the swooning saint and the smiling angel about to pierce her heart with a golden arrow. Bernini's numerous busts also carry an analogous sense of persuasive dramatic realism, whether they are allegorical busts such as the Damned Soul and Blessed Soul (both 1619?, Palazzo di Spagna, Rome), or portraits such as those of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1632, Galleria Borghese) or Louis XIV of France (1665, Palace of Versailles). Bernini's secular architecture included designs for several palaces: Palazzo Ludovisi (now Palazzo Montecitorio, 1650) and Palazzo Chigi (now Palazzo Odescalchi, 1664), in Rome, and an unexecuted design for the Louvre presented to Louis XIV in 1665, when Bernini spent five months in Paris.

BERNINI GIANLORENZO
Bernini did not begin to design churches until he was 60 years old, but his three efforts in ecclesiastical architecture are significant. His church at Castelgandolfo (1658-1661) employs a Greek cross, and his church at Ariccia (16621664), a circle plan. His third church, Sant' Andrea al Quirinale (1658-1670) in Rome, is his greatest. The church was constructed on an oval plan with an ovoid porch extending beyond the facade, echoing the interior rhythms of the building. The interior, decorated with dark, multicolored marble, has a dramatic oval dome of white and gold. Also dating from the 1660s are the Scala Regia (Royal Staircase, 16631666), connecting the papal apartments in the Vatican Palace to Saint Peter's, and the magnificent Piazza San Pietro (designed 1667), framing the approach to the basilica in a dynamic ovular space formed by two vast semicircular colonnades.

BERNINI GIANLORENZO

Bernini's most outstanding fountain group is in the spectacular Fountain of the Four Rivers (1648-1651) in the Piazza Navona in Rome. Bernini remained a vital and active artist virtually up to his death. His final work, Bust of the Savior (Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia), presents a withdrawn and restrained image of Christ indicative of what is now known to have been Bernini's calm and resigned attitude toward death.

BORROMINI FRANCESCO
Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), one of the most original and important architects in 17th-century Italy. Along with the works of such other master builders as Gianlorenzo Bernini and Pietro da Cortona, Borromini's primarily ecclesiastical structures virtually transformed Rome into a baroque city. Unlike Bernini and Cortona, however, Borromini devoted himself exclusively to architecture, becoming virtually obsessed with finding new and unorthodox uses of space. In his buildings, mass and void combine in a unique manifestation of the baroque love of energetic movement, dynamism, and theatricality.

BORROMINI FRANCESCO
More than any other architect of his time, Borromini created a sense of visual excitement with his undulating, convexconcave walls complementing rhythmic, inventive floor plans. Borromini did not, however, reject the past to achieve innovation, for he was inspired by both antique and Renaissance architecture. Michelangelo's influence was especially important, as Borromini himself explained in his Opus architectonicum, a treatise written in 1648.

BORROMINI FRANCESCO
Not until 1634 was Borromini given his first major architectural commission, the Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1638-41; facade completed 1667). The church's plan is a diamond shaped of two abutting equilateral triangles beneath an oval dome. As were all of Borromini's projects it was created according to strict geometrical proportions. The facade (higher than the church itself) presents an undulating flow of space and is one of baroque Rome's most characteristic monuments. Borromini built Sant'Ivo della Sapienza between 1642 and 1660, today the church of the University of Rome. Its six-pointed star shape is carried up into its strikingly original hexagonal dome. Borromini's facade (1653-66) for Sant'Agnese in Piazza Navona replaced an earlier design. Between 1647 and 1650 he remodeled the Early Christian basilica of Saint John Lateran in a baroque fashion. Borromini's last great project before his death by suicide on Aug 2, 1667, was the design for the Collegio di Propaganda Fide (1646-67), Jesuit headquarters in Rome, a huge palace that again demonstrates an overall geometric unity.

BRAMANTE DONATO
Donato Bramante (1444-1514), the leading architect of the High Renaissance in Italy.

Born Donato di Pascussio d'Antonio in 1444, in Monte Andruvaldo, near Urbino, Bramante was trained as a painter. His earliest recorded works are frescoes in the Palazzo del Podest in Bergamo, executed in 1477. His architectural career began in Milan, where he settled in 1482. In his design for the Church of Santa Maria presso Santo Satiro (1488), he overcame the difficulties of an awkward site by using false perspective in the painted apse to create a feeling of depththe first time this device had been used in architecture. His other works in Milan, such as the apse of Santa Maria delle Grazie (circa 1492-95), show some influence of the classical ideals of the Florentine Renaissance but display more of a dependence on Byzantine prototypes, with their polygonal floor plans and mannered decorations.

With the fall of Duke Ludovico Sforza in 1499, Bramante left Milan and settled in Rome, where, until the end of his life, he was employed almost exclusively by the ambitious and extravagant Pope Julius II. In Rome, under the influence of classical antiquity, his style became more monumental and less ornamented.

BRAMANTE DONATO
His first major design in Rome, the Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio (1502), is a circular, domed shrine loosely modeled after the Roman Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli. With no surface decoration, it personifies the High Renaissance style, combining the Roman ideals of severitas and dignitas with Renaissance elegance and vitality. His two greatest projects, which occupied his most creative years but which did not reach completion, were his plans for the rebuilding of Saint Peter's Church and the Vatican Palace. His design for Saint Peter's called for a large square building surmounted by a central dome, plus four smaller subsidiary domes and four towers. The piers and arches that were to support the dome were actually built, but before the structure could be finished, the design was radically altered by both Michelangelo and Carlo Maderno; Saint Peter's was completed by Maderno in its present form of a longitudinal, rectangular basilica. Bramante's plan for additions to the Vatican Palace, on a 275-m (900-ft) sloping site, consisted of three successive courts surmounted by grandiose tiered landings. The plan was notable for its innovative axial arrangement and for its wonderful spaciousness, but it was never fully executed, and later additions completely spoiled its proportions. Bramante stands with Michelangelo and Raphael as one of the artistic giants of the High Renaissance in Italy. Successfully fusing the ideals of classical antiquity with those of Christian inspiration, his sculptural, expressive grandeur paved the way for the more elaborate baroque school of the next century. He died in Rome on March 11 or April 11, 1514.

BREUER MARCEL LAJOS

Marcel Lajos Breuer (1902-1981), HungarianAmerican architect, designer, and teacher, who helped establish the functionalist principles underlying the International Style. Breuer was born in Pcs, Hungary, May 21, 1902. He studied at the Bauhaus school of design in Weimar, Germany, where the architect Walter Gropius and others were developing the functionalist balance of aesthetics, purpose, and modern technology. As director of the Bauhaus furniture department, Breuer designed the first contemporary chairs suitable for mass production, made of plywood on tubular metal modular frames. From 1928 he traveled and practiced architecture in Berlin, designing the modular steel-frame and concrete Harnischmacher house (Wiesbaden, 1932).

BREUER MARCEL LAJOS

After the rise of the Nazi Party, Breuer fled to England in 1933 and to the United States in 1937. There, under Gropius, he helped develop the influential School of Architecture at Harvard University. He also designed houses, such as his own home in Lincoln, Massachusetts (1939), using local materials. In 1946 Breuer maintained a practice in New York City. With Pier Luigi Nervi, an Italian, and Bernard Zehrfuss, a Frenchman, he designed UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1958). His other major works include De Bijenkorf (Beehive) department store in Rotterdam (1961); the IBM Research Center in La Garde, France (1962); the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City, 1966); and the Saint John's Abbey Church, Collegeville, Minnesota (1967). His buildings are generally composed of severe blocks in rough, unfinished stone or concrete and wood.

BRUNELLESCHI FILIPPO
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), Florentine architect, one of the initiators of the Italian Renaissance. His revival of classical forms and his championing of an architecture based on mathematics, proportion, and perspective make him a key artistic figure in the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era. Brunelleschi was born in Florence in 1377 and received his early training as an artisan in silver and gold. In 1401 he entered, and lost, the famous design competition for the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery. He then turned to architecture and in 1418 received the commission to execute the dome of the unfinished Gothic Cathedral of Florence, also called the Duomo. The dome, a great innovation both artistically and technically, consists of two octagonal vaults, one inside the other. Its shape was dictated by its structural needsone of the first examples of architectural functionalism. Brunelleschi made a design feature of the necessary eight ribs of the vault, carrying them over to the exterior of the dome, where they provide the framework for the dome's decorative elements, which also include architectural reliefs, circular windows, and a beautifully proportioned cupola. This was the first time that a dome created the same strong effect on the exterior as it did on the interior.

THE DUOMO OF CATHEDRAL OF FLORENCE

BRUNELLESCHI FILIPPO
In other buildings, such as the Medici Church of San Lorenzo (1418-28) and the foundling hospital called the Ospedale degli Innocenti (1421-55), Brunelleschi devised an austere, geometric style inspired by the art of ancient Rome. Completely different from the emotional, elaborate Gothic mode that still prevailed in his time, Brunelleschi's style emphasized mathematical rigor in its use of straight lines, flat planes, and cubic spaces. This wall architecture, with its flat facades, set the tone for many of the later buildings of the Florentine Renaissance. Later in his career, notably in the unfinished Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli (begun 1434), the Basilica of Santo Spirito (begun 1436), and the Pazzi Chapel (begun c. 1441), he moved away from this linear, geometric style to a somewhat more sculptural, rhythmic style. In the first of these buildings, for instance, the interior was formed not by flat walls, but by massive niches opening from a central octagon. This style, with its expressive interplay of solids and voids, was the first step toward an architecture that led eventually to the baroque. Brunelleschi was also an important innovator in other areas. Along with the painter Masaccio, he was one of the first Renaissance masters to rediscover the laws of scientific perspective. He executed two perspective paintings (now lost), probably between 1415 and 1420, and he is also credited with having painted the architectural background in one of Masaccio's early works. His influence on his contemporaries and immediate followers was very strong and has been felt even in the 20th century, when modern architects came to revere him as the first great exponent of rational architecture. Brunelleschi died in Florence in 1446.

ISSACS SACRIFICE

CALLICRATES
(lived 5th century bc), Greek architect. Callicrates collaborated with the architect Ictinus in designing the Parthenon (dedicated 438 bc) on the Acropolis in Athens in the severe Doric style. He also built temples in the lighter Ionic style, including the Temple of Athena Nike (427 bc), or Wingless Victory, in Athens.

ICTINUS
(5th century bc), Greek architect, who, in association with Callicrates, designed the Parthenon in Athens in the Doric style. Ictinus also built the Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae, near Phigalia, and the Telestrion, or Hall of Mysteries, at Eleusis.

THE PARTHENON

THE PARTHENON

COSTA LUCIO
Lcio Costa (1902-1998), French-born Brazilian architect, who is the founder of modern architecture in Brazil. In the 1930s, as director of the National School of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro, he brought to Brazil the avant-garde French architect Le Corbusier and introduced curriculum that helped form a new generation of Brazilian architects. In his Parque Guinle apartments in Rio de Janeiro (1954) and other works he designed louvered facades to block the sun. As principal designer of Braslia (1957), he was responsible for that modern city's distinctive fan-shaped plan.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE URBANISTIC DESIGN OF BRASILIA

GAUDI ANTONI
Antoni Gaud (1852-1926), Catalan architect, one of the most creative practitioners of his art in modern times. His style is often described as a blend of neo-Gothic and art nouveau, but it also has surrealist and cubist elements. Born June 25, 1852, in Reus, Catalonia, Antoni Gaud i Cornet was the son of a coppersmith. He attended the School of Architecture in Barcelona (1874-1878), the city where he spent his life. As a student he was already involved in several building projects. His earliest major assignment was the Casa Vicens (1878-1880), a private home in Barcelona. This and other work brought him the patronage of an industrialist, Eusebio Gell, for whom he carried out many important commissions, including the Palacio Gell (18851889), distinguished by parabolic arches and rich ironwork, and the bizarre Park Gell (1900-1914), with its stone trees, reptilian fountains, and
mosaics of broken ceramic pieces set in concrete.

PARK GUELL S MOSAIC

GAUDI ANTONI
In 1883 Gaud was appointed official architect of the huge Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Famlia (Church of the Sacred Family), which, although still unfinished at his death, is acknowledged as his masterpiece. Its lofty semicubist towers, with mosaic-covered finials, dominate the Barcelona skyline, and its imaginative forms, colors, and textures are unmatched in European architecture. Construction began again on the church in 1979, following Gauds original vision for the structure.

CHURCH OF SACRED FAMILY

CASA BATLLO
Among Gaud's other celebrated works are two apartment buildings, the Casa Batll (1907) and the Casa Mil (1905-1907). These large stone and iron structures minimize traditional straight lines and flat surfaces by the use of rounded, irregularly spaced openings and a roof and balconies that have a wavelike appearance. Gaud was deeply involved in Catalan nationalism, of which he was a leader. He died June 10, 1926, in Barcelona

GEHRY FRANK
Frank Gehry, born in 1929, American architect, a leader in the later phases of the postmodern movement in architecture. Gehry's distinctive style emerged in the 1970s with his dramatic use of ordinary building materials, such as chain-link fencing, plywood, and corrugated metal. Gehry continued to experiment with industrial materials and bold sculptural forms as his work evolved. In 1989 he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, an international award recognizing professional excellence in architecture. Born Ephraim Goldberg in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Gehry moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. There he studied architecture at the University of Southern California and worked for the architectural firm of Victor Gruen Associates. In 1956 Gehry studied urban planning at the Harvard School of Design and then returned to Los Angeles to work for Victor Gruen until 1960. After spending a year at the Parisoffice of French architect Andr Remondet, Gehry returned to Los Angeles where he opened his own practice in 1962. Gehry's earliest independent designs reveal the strong influence of Swiss French architect Le Corbusier. By 1972, however, he had begun to use nontraditional geometric forms in simple buildings constructed of corrugated metal and other ordinary materials. For example, the Ron Davis house in Malibu, California (1970-1972), has a trapezoid-shaped roof.

GEHRY FRANK
Gehry's remodeling of his own house in Santa Monica, California, in 1979, became the focus of intense professional and journalistic attention. Gehry's new rooms were formed by sharp angular roofs sided with corrugated metal and decorated with angled panels of chain-link fence. He designed numerous private residences, each exploring the discordant possibilities of angled, colliding planes, bright colors, and ordinary industrial materials.
While continuing to design private residences, Gehry received important public commissions. They included a new campus (1981-1984) for the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, the California Aerospace Museum (1982-1984) in Los Angeles, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota (1990-1993) in Minneapolis.

GEHRY FRANK
His playful configuration for the Vitra Design Museum (1990) in Weil am Rhein, Germany, features an array of geometric volumes joined at unusual angles so that they appear to collide with one another. Gehry produced a strikingly original design for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain, which opened in 1997. The dramatically curved forms of the museum are accentuated by a shiny titanium surface.

GEHRY FRANK
The gleaming titanium reflects a nearby river and shimmers as light strikes it. Gehrys next museum was the Experience Music Project (1999-2000) in Seattle, Washington. The museums exterior has no right angles, and its wavy forms are covered in brightly painted panels of sheet metal. In 2003 the Walt Disney Concert Hall opened in Los Angeles to widespread acclaim. Gehrys design features his trademark curved metal forms. Inside, the auditorium is of wood, and seating for the audience surrounds the concert stage. Gehry has compared the design to a ceremonial barge taking orchestra and audience on a journey through music.

GEHRY FRANK
His playful configuration for the Vitra Design Museum (1990) in Weil am Rhein, Germany, features an array of geometric volumes joined at unusual angles so that they appear to collide with one another. Gehry produced a strikingly original design for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain, which opened in 1997. The dramatically curved forms of the museum are accentuated by a shiny titanium surface. The gleaming titanium reflects a nearby river and shimmers as light strikes it. Gehrys next museum was the Experience Music Project (1999-2000) in Seattle, Washington. The museums exterior has no right angles, and its wavy forms are covered in brightly painted panels of sheet metal. In 2003 the Walt Disney Concert Hall opened in Los Angeles to widespread acclaim. Gehrys design features his trademark curved metal forms. Inside, the auditorium is of wood, and seating for the audience surrounds the concert stage. Gehry has compared the design to a ceremonial barge taking orchestra and audience on a journey through music.

GROPIUS WALTER
Walter Gropius (1883-1969), German American architect and educator, who founded the Bauhaus, a German art school that became a seminal force in architecture and applied art during the first half of the 20th century. His central thesis, which served as the school's guiding principle, was that design (in any of its forms) should be functional, based on a wedding of art and engineering. This concept, expressed in his buildings, had a profound influence on modern architecture. Walter Adolph Gropius was born in Berlin on May 18, 1883, and studied architecture in Munich and Berlin-Charlottenburg. From 1907 to 1910 he worked in the offices of the German pioneering functional architect Peter Behrens in Berlin. In 1911 he joined the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Union), formed to ally designers with machine production. Working with Adolph Meyer, he designed the Fagus Works in Alfeld (1910-11) and the office building for the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne (1914), which made his name known throughout Europe. After World War I he became director of two Weimar art schools. Reorganizing them in 1919 as the Staatliches Bauhaus (State Building School), he introduced a new approach to design education that emphasized the principle of uniting art and technology; students received a basic crafts training to gain an acquaintance with materials and processes. This method, which led to a heightened awareness of the realities of production, virtually revolutionized modern design. When the school was moved to Dessau in 1925, Gropius designed its buildings. They are marked by simplicity of shape, elimination of surface decoration, and the extensive use of glass.

GROPIUS WALTER
Gropius resigned as director of the Bauhaus in 1928 to return to private practice. Opposed to the Nazi regime, he left Germany secretly in 1934, and after several years in England, he went to the United States to join the architecture faculty of Harvard University. As head of the department (1938-52), he introduced the Bauhaus concepts and helped to shape a generation of American architects. In 1946 he formed a group called the Architects Collaborative, which executed many important commissions, including the Harvard Graduate Center (1949), the U.S. Embassy in Athens (1960), and the University of Baghdd (1961). He designed the Pan Am Building (1963) in New York City in collaboration with the Italian American architect Pietro Belluschi. Gropius died in Boston on July 5, 1969.

JOHNSON PHILLIP
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was born in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1927 he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in philosophy. Almost immediately his interests turned to architecture, and he became recognized as a leading authority on contemporary trends. In 1932 he was appointed chairman of the department of architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. While in this post he strove to popularize the new architectural concept of sleek functional design, originally developed in Europe, which he named the International Style. Johnson's book International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (1932), written in collaboration with the American architectural historian HenryRussell Hitchcock, helped introduce the principles of this new approach to architecture to the United States. In 1940 Johnson left the museum and enrolled again at Harvard. He received an architectural degree in 1943, studying under Walter Gropius, the German-born leader of the modern style. Johnson entered the Army Corps of Engineers after receiving his degree during World War II. In 1946 he resumed his former post at the Museum of Modern Art. Under his direction, which lasted until 1954, museum exhibitions and publications continued to emphasize the International Style. During his years at the museum, he played a major role in modernizing American architecture.

JOHNSON PHILLIP
Johnson began designing buildings in 1942. Usually luxurious in scale and materials, his buildings featured an expansive use of interior space, a classical sense of symmetry, and an elegant grace. Johnsons architecture first attracted public attention in 1949 with the construction of the Glass House, his own residence in New Canaan, Connecticut. A simple cube with all-glass exterior walls and practically no interior walls, the Glass House was greatly influenced by Johnsons mentor, Mies van der Rohe, whose biography Johnson wrote in 1947. Johnson soon became one of the most frequently-commissioned architects in the world. In New York City he designed landmarks such as the Seagram Building (1958), a glass skyscraper in collaboration with Mies van der Rohe; the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center (1965); and parts of the Museum of Modern Art, including an outdoor sculpture garden and two new wings built in 1964. At Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, he designed the Kline Science Center (1962) and the AT&T headquarters in New York (1984,now Sony Building) his first skyscrapper of the Post Modern Architecture.

SANTIAGO CALATRAVA
Santiago Calatrava was born in Valencia, Spain in 1951. He graduated from the Institute of Architecture in Valencia and from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Calatrava opened his own architecture and engineering office in Zurich. Most of his early realized work was in Switzerland and Spain, where he has exhibited his designs and won several awards. As both an architect and an engineer, Calatrava easily identifies with both disciplines. He often creates innovative works that depend on a firm grasp of both the creative and structural aspects of design. His skills as an engineer allow him to create sculptural surfaces and unusual spaces.

SANTIAGO CALATRAVA
Calatrava avoids the apathetic acceptance of established forms. In 1979 he won the Auguste Perret award for the quality of Perret's structural work and for re-emphasizing the importance of primary structure in defining form. Despite an influential presence within the European architectural community, Calatrava has rarely designed a totally enclosed building. Rather, most of his creations are open structures. One of his earliest works is the Stadelhofen Railway Station (Zurich, 1984), a transportation terminal, railway station made of steel frames and glass is a Graceful curving glass-roofed canopy developed with steel.

SANTIAGO CALATRAVA
Other major buildings are: Alamillo Bridge and La Cartuja Viaduct, at Seville, Spain, 1987 to 1992 ; Campo Volantin Footbridge, at Bilbao, Spain, 1990 to 1998. Sondica Airport, at Bilbao, Spain, 1990 to 1999 ; Alameda Bridge and Underground Station, at Valencia, Spain, 1991 to 1995 .; City of Science Museum and Planetarium, at Valencia, Spain ; Palace of the Arts, at Valencia, Spain, 2001 ; Oriente Station, at Lisbon, Portugal, 1993 to 1998 ; Milwaukee Art Muesum, at Milwaukee, Wisconsin

SANTIAGO CALATRAVA

KENZ TANGE
Japanese architect, the most prominent modern architect of Japan. In his designs for public buildings, Tange reconciled 20thcentury Western styles and materials with traditional Japanese forms. He won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the highest award in architecture, in 1987. Born September 4, 1913, in saka, Tange studied architecture and engineering at Tokyo University, becoming a professor in 1946. He achieved international prominence in 1949 with his winning design for the Peace Museum in Hiroshima, Japan. Most of Tanges buildings are of reinforced concrete, the logical modern building material of Japan, where frequent earthquakes limit the use of the glass-and-steel construction common in other countries. He was heavily influenced by French architect Le Corbusier, a master in the use of unadorned concrete.

KENZ TANGE
Tange's early designs attempted to
combine modernism with traditional Japanese forms of architecture. In the late 1960s he rejected this earlier regionalism in favor of an abstract international style. Although his styles have transformed over time,

he has consistently generated

designs based on a clear structural order.

In 1961, Tange became the principal of the firm Kenzo Tange & Urtec (the present day Kenzo Tange & Associates), and then won international fame for his design for the gymnasium for the 1964 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo. He was also known for his Tokyo Plan of 1960, which proposed a radical redesign of the city. Although not fully implemented, it influenced architects worldwide. In the 1960s he also designed the new master plan for the capital city of the Republic of Macedonia, Skopje, which was heavily damaged by the 1963 earthquake.

OSCAR NIEMEYER
Oscar Niemeyer was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the 15th December 1907. Oscar Niemeyer graduated from the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro in 1934.At this time Oscar Niemeyer joined a team of Brazilian architects collaborating with Le Corbusier on a new Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro. Oscar Niemeyer worked with Lucio Costa and Le Corbusier till 1938 on this project. The corbusian influence is evident in the early works of Oscar Niemeyer. However, the architect gradually acquired his own style: the lightness of the curved forms created spaces that transformed the architectural scheme into something that was higher to unknown; harmony, grace and elegance are the adjectives that are most appropriate to describe the work of Oscar Niemeyer.

OSCAR NIEMEYER
The architecture of Brasilia, glimpsed in the sketches submitted by Lucio Costa for the international design contest for the new capital of Brazil, was the result of Oscar Niemeyer 's definitive impetus on the scene of the international history of contemporary architecture. The concave and convex domes of the National Congress and the columns of the Alvorada and Planalto palaces and the Supreme Court are highly original features.

Combining these with the spectacular forms of the columns of the Cathedral and the palaces of Itamaraty and Justica, Oscar Niemeyer succeeded in closing the rectangular and symmetrical perspective formed by the repetition of the Esplanada and Ministry.

OSCAR NIEMEYER
The use of reinforced concrete to form curves or as a shell and the unique use of the aesthetic possibilities of the straight line were translated into factories, skyscrapers, exhibition centres, residential areas, theatres, temples, head office buildings for public and private sector companies, universities, clubs, hospitals and buildings for various social schemes.

Of these, the following are worthy of special mention: the Obra do Berco and residence on the Estrada das Canoas in Rio de Janeiro; The Duchen factory, the Copan building and Ibirapuera Park in Sao Paulo; the Pampulha architectural complex including a casino, restaurant and the Temple of St. Francis of Assisi, in Belo Horizonte; the design for the Hotel de Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais, the Caracas Museum in Venezuela, the headquarters building of the Communist Party in Paris, the head office of Editora Mondatori in Milan, the Constantine University in Algeria and the Niteroi Museum of Contemporary Art, Rio de Janeiro.

OSCAR NIEMEYER
The constant presence, of Oscar Niemeyer on the scene of international contemporary architecture from 1936 until the present time, has transformed him into a symbol of Brazil. Oscar Niemeyer has received numerous prizes and is the owner of a vast library containing books written by him and also by Stamo Papadaki, as well as editions of early editions of magazines on French and Italian architecture.