To Calatrava or Not To Calatrava

In November, The Denver Post reported that the City of Denver had settled with starchitect Santiago Calatrava, agreeing to pay him a $250,000 licensing fee to utilize his designs for a hotel, bridge, train station and terminal extension at Denver International Airport.

The article reports that the agreement between the City and Calatrava’s design firm preclude them from utilizing proprietary design elements including some white architectural elements on the upper exterior of the hotel and some columns.

Lost was the Calatrava-designed bridge scrapped when the budget for the project was cut by from $650M to $500M in February. The bridge project got the ax in April. Another great article by Jeffrey Leib at the Post details the contentious relationship between architect, contractor and airport.

The bridge is hardly mentioned, yet from the video it is evident that the bridge was a key design element tying the project together. Without the bridge, the project will be lacking. And like it or not, without the proprietary design elements Denver will end up with a psuedo-Calatrava.