On the other hand, Santiago Calatrava’s first building in the United States, the award-winning Milwaukee Art Museum, is mechanical and almost aircraft-like in its design. Elements from his popular suspension bridges have worked their way into the concept. The original museum, the War Memorial Center, designed in the 1950’s by Eero Saarinen, and the new Quadracci Pavilion by Calatrava have both received Time magazine’s Best Design Award, in 1957 and 2001, respectively.

The composition is light and dynamic, and is reinforced by the Burke Brise Soleil movable wings, which were designed partly as a sunscreen and partly for crowd entertainment. These mechanical wings rise each day at 10 a.m., when the museum opens. The wings close and reopen at noon and close for the evening at 5 p.m. The museum is open until 8 p.m. Thursdays, and the wings follow that schedule.

The wingspan of the Burke Brise Soleil compares to that of a Boeing 747–400, and with that in mind, they were designed to close automatically when the wind speed reaches 23 miles per hour in order to avoid wind damage. And although traditionalists have taken issue with the wings over the need to announce their operation and their potential to distract from the museum’s artwork, other critics have given it at least qualified praise. Paul Goldberger wrote in The New Yorker that "the Quadracci Pavilion is a spectacular building that has nothing to do with the display of art and everything to do with getting crowds to come to the museum."

Daniel Keegan, the director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, says, "This is world-class architecture holding a world-class art collection and worth a special trip." These mechanical wings are a first in American design, and this kinetic structure has brought museum design to its current, albeit temporary, pinnacle, as upcoming generations of starchitects continue to reinvent the concept of museum design, fulfilling the challenge set forth by Wright: "Every great architect is—necessarily—a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age."

Michael Allan Torre is an architect and a contributing writer to The Modern Estate, an architecture magazine. For his first professional project, he turned an abandoned railroad switch tower into a railroad museum.