Santiago Calatrava to Design ‘Cornerstone of New Campus’ at USF Polytechnic

Watch out, Disneyworld. Hang on to your geodesic-domed hat, Epcot Center. Because bridgemaster Santiago Calatrava is bringing his epic swoops and avian ribbing to Florida. Calatrava’s firm has been commissioned to design the first building for the new campus of the the University of South Florida Polytechnic (USFP) in Lakeland, Florida, the school announced this week. Occupying 100,000 square feet, USFP’s $45 million science and technology building will be the cornerstone of the new campus and will establish the design scheme for all buildings in the initial phase of the campus master plan. It will rise from farmland (currently occupied by the billboard pictured above) at the northernmost corner of the campus. Groundbreaking is expected late this year and the building is slated to open in late summer 2012.

“As an architect and an engineer, I greatly value the schools of science and technology,” said Calatrava, himself a graduate of a polytechnic university in Valencia, Spain. “It is my goal to create a facility that both unites and pays homage to these two fields, while providing generations of students with a state-of-the-art education center in which to learn and grow.” Also, he liked the bulls. “I would like to express how moved I was by seeing those beautiful animals—bulls—walking free on the site,” he said in a video statement taped on Tuesday. “This delivers an enormous energetic and forward-looking picture of the incoming buildings.”

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