Calatrava: The man behind the Athens Olympics architecture

Did you enjoy seeing the beautiful architecture designed for the Athens Olympics? If so, you must see the new show devoted to the man who made it all happen, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. The Henry Art Gallery of the University of Washington has organized a touring exhibition, "Santiago Calatrava: The Architect's Studio," that brilliantly captures the essence of perhaps the hottest architect in the world today.

While the Calatrava show concentrates on the evolution of manmade structures, another exhibit at the Henry analyzes the troubling interaction between nature and human intervention in the form of architecture, agriculture, mining and even nuclear-weapons testing. "Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth" displays more than 100 black-and-white aerial photographs of the U.S., Israel, Kuwait and the Czech Republic.

Architecture exhibits are notoriously difficult to make interesting visually. The usual, boring formula is to combine sketches, plans, models and photos documenting each building. Guest curator Kirsten Kiser of Stockholm, Sweden, has done all this, but she has also added videotapes, paintings and sculptures and made sure the very detailed large-scale models are well-situated and viewable from all sides.

Richard Andrews, Henry Art Gallery director, noted in an interview that the other reason the Calatrava exhibit was brought to Seattle was to expose politicians and power brokers to the idea that Seattle should have a bridge (or two) by the world's greatest bridge designer. It sounds like a good idea to me. A visit should be compulsory for all city, state and county arts commissioners, council members, cultural bureaucrats, engineers and land-use advocates.

Bridges, which Calatrava sees as really having no function other than uniting two sides, take on a powerful aesthetic and symbolic character in the jobs he has completed to great acclaim in Bilbao, Spain; Orléans, France; and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Zürich-based architect's hallmarks are huge, light and airy structures, like the Olympic sports complex, a concert hall in the Canary Islands, and train stations in Lisbon, Portugal; Lyons, France; and Liège, Belgium. He will design the new PATH train station at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. Seattle should grab the chance to get an Alaskan Way viaduct makeover or a new I-520 bridge by this innovative and optimistic genius.

Gowin, on the other hand, shows the sins and scars of humankind's assault on the natural and built environment. Beautiful as they are when seen from above, the scenes by the 60-year-old Princeton University professor could make one a pessimist about the fate of the American landscape after more than 200 years of settlement, natural-resource exploitation, military encampments and reckless abandonment of mining sites.

Thanks to Andrews, Gowin's whole 16-year project began in Seattle when, in 1979, Andrews, then head of public art for Seattle Arts Commission, took advantage of available National Endowment for the Arts funds to commission a number of photographers to document the Pacific Northwest. Gowin was among them and, lucky for him, Mount St. Helens erupted. These stunning photographs, taken until 1986, are on view.

They anchor the 92 other prints that chronicle everything from abandoned settlements at Hanford nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington, to awful mining and chemical plant vistas in Nevada, Wyoming and the Czech Republic, to amazing fly-over shots of the tracks left by the Iraqi army during the Gulf War in Kuwait.

Apart from the volcano aftermath series, Northwest residents will be curious to see the Eastern Washington wheat-farming views, the Hanford shots and the giant irrigation patterns near the Columbia and Snake rivers.