The owner of the Santiago Calatrava-designed Ysios winery is demanding that the Spanish architect contribute $2 million ($2.6 million) for the redesign and reconstruction the building’s leaky roof. The architect’s original builders have made several attempts to fix the roof so it doesn’t let in water, and now the owner wants to hire a new architect to design a replacement for the curvy roof.
The Ysios winery is not the first building by Calatrava to experience problems after its completion. The ceramic outer skin of the Palau de Les Arts in Valencia, the architect’s home city, is said to be slowly wrinkling and shaking loose. Opposition politicians in Valencia claim that the budget for the project has quadrupled to $1 billion because of the spaceship-like design, with almost 100 million spent on the architect’s fee. Calatrava has reportedly said that his fees for various projects in the city were reasonable and that Valencia has benefited from the arts and science center which put the city on the tourist map.
Calatrava’s Zubizuri bridge in northern Bilbao has been dubbed the “wipe-out” bridge because of the number of people that have slipped and fallen. It is said that the city spends around 6,000 on repairs. The architect and the firms involved in the building of the conference hall in Oviedo were ordered by the court to pay 3 million because a part of the structure collapsed during construction.
Via The Guardian, Archinect
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