Santiago Calatrava: AIA Gold Medal Acceptance Speech

February 11, 2005 | Washington, DC Thank you. It is very difficult for me to speak of the emotion I feel at this moment. It was only a few months ago that you accepted me as a Fellow of the AIA. Now, today, you give me this great award. For an architect who only recently came to the United States, the warmth and generosity of your welcome are overwhelming.

But I will tell you, this occasion is also a little embarrassing. When you get an award like this, you are supposed to make a speech about the future of your profession. But I feel that I am not good at predicting the future. I never thought I would be standing here tonight.

I would like to share with you some thoughts about the past and the history of our profession—about its very deep roots. This is perhaps a way for us to reflect on the meaning of the work we do.

In the beginning was the word. Our beginning, as architects, is therefore in the Greek language. We are, in fact, one of the very few modern professions that calls itself by a Greek name. We have a name that goes all the way back to ancient Greece: “ARCHITEKTON”. This word means “the first worker”, the first one on the site.

We can learn more if we break this word in two. The beginning of the word, “ARCH”, is the part that means “the first.” To be an architect, to the Greeks, was to have the responsibility that comes with priority. This is a very ancient concept. It is so ancient that this part of the word, “ARCH”, goes back even earlier than Greek, to Sanskrit.

The second part of the word is “TEKTON”. This part, too, can tell us something important about our profession. “TEKTTON”, meaning “a worker,” is closely related to “TEKNIKI” - the word that the Greeks used for a technique. But this word, in turn, is very close to the Greek word “TECHNI”, the word Greeks also use for “art”. So we learn that, for the Greeks, the practical, mechanical skill of a worker could give rise to art. When you saw the result of technique and it moved you, then it became art.

So art is something that seems to go beyond the limits of human skill. For this reason, the Greeks thought that the person who could produce a work of art must somehow be possessed by one of the muses. The word in Greek which expresses it is “ENTEOS ASMOS”—literally, to have a god inside you and gives origin to the word “enthousiasmos”.

So you can say, the more enthusiastic you feel about your job, the better the results will be.

Now, these Greek ideas about art and architecture have come to us very directly, through our most classic sources. Vitruvius, the Roman-era author, whom every architecture student learns to quote, was actually from the most Hellenized part of Italy. Vitruvius came from Sicily, which then was known as Magna Grecia—as we might say, Greater Greece. Vitruvius defined the qualities of architecture as firmitas, utilitas, venustas. Firmitas, we might translate as durability. Utilitas is functionality. And venustas is beauty.

This expresses how the tradition of architecture was still understood centuries later, in the Renaissance. Daniele Barbaro, who was the great patron of Andrea Palladio, and who therefore had a tremendous influence on the practice of architecture, wrote about these three qualities of Vitruvius: firmitas, utilitas, venustas. And in the spirit of the Renaissance, Barbaro made an analogy between these qualities and the qualities of an ideal human being.

He wrote that firmitas, the “firmness” of a building is like tenacity in a human being. Utilitas, the “functionality” is like goodness in a human being. And venustas, the “beauty”, he compared to intelligence in a human being. In that regard, Daniele Barbaro follows the Greek school of philosophy which makes man the measure of everything in architecture.

This is the profound meaning of architecture, as it has been understood through the ages: from the Greeks, to the Romans, to the Renaissance. And we can trace this understanding back even further. I would like to conclude by reading to you the most ancient definition I have found of the profession of the architect. It goes back to the time of ancient Egypt—approximately 1,200 B.C. This is what it says:

“See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge of all workmanship, so that he can make skillful things: working in gold, in silver, and in brass…”

I am sure you all recognize where this comes from. It is the Bible: Exodus, chapter 31. God, the ultimate client, has commissioned Bezalel to design and build the Tabernacle.

What do we hear in this most ancient and most important text? We hear everything that we have been discussing. There is, first of all, the correspondence between material things and personal, spiritual qualities—the sort of correspondence we will later discover in Daniele Barbaro. The architect Bezalel has wisdom, understanding and knowledge, so that he can work in gold, silver and brass. It is no mistake that the words have this rhythm of three and then three. Long before most people could read the Bible, they learned it by memory, by hearing it spoken. This kind of association—wisdom, understanding, knowledge…gold, silver, brass—was exactly the kind of meaning they received by listening to the Bible.

What else do we hear in this text? We hear that God’s spirit has filled Bezalel. This is what we will come across later, with the Greeks, with their idea of “ENTEOS ASMOS” or enthusiasm. Bezalel will be able to go beyond technique to art, because a spirit much greater than his own has filled him.

But even so, we also hear, in the Bible, that “man is the measure of all things.” God calls Bezalel by name. This tremendous work, which calls for a spirit that seems beyond human capability, must nevertheless be carried out by someone with a name—an individual—someone with human limits.

My fellow architects—my dear colleagues, who have moved me so profoundly with the award of this Gold Medal—I do not know the future of our profession. But we know our past, to which we must be responsible. Our past tells us that we are human beings—fallible and limited—who do technical work with material things. Our past also tells us that somehow, through an agency we do not understand, we can sometimes create art. When that happens, we are no longer merely workers. We became “ARCHITEKTON” - the first among workers.

If we understand our profession in this way, then we realize that we must speak the name of architect with a combination of pride and humility. I feel that same combination tonight, as I thank you from the bottom of my heart, for the unbelievable honor you have given me.