Santiago Calatrava vs. the City of Bilbao

The Times today offers an Arts in Brief about a case that was all over the London papers last week. Starchitect Santiago Calatrava — you know, the guy who makes everything look like the same graceful bird in flight — is suing the city of Bilbao over their plans to add an extension to his iconic ten-year-old Campo Volantin footbridge. Calatrava claims that the extension, designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, “breaks the symmetry of the bridge, clumsily distorts the design … and damages the integrity of his work,� and is seeking 250,000 Euros and the dismantling of the extension, or 3 million euros in “moral damages� if the extension stays up.

The Isozaki extension.Photo: Fernando Pascullo