This week we touched upon architects we have been learning about for a while, such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, and learned a new name: Eero Saarinen. Thus lecture inspired me to speak about inspiration and how designs develop. I have two angles to speak about this. The first is being inspired bu yourself and your own developing work. The second is being inspired by your contemporaries and mentors and then trying to find your own way. Everyone knows Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum. It is an innovation in architecture, engineering, and design, and its stands out agains the rest of the buildings in New York City, as it probably would agains almost any landscape. The incredible continuous ramp design is iconic to say the least, but it did not just come out of no where. With a basic knowledge of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, you would be able to recognize his buildings where he utilizes geometric shapes like rectangles, carrying roof lines, open floor plans, and natural elements like untainted wood and stone. That was his aesthetic for a long time and stays true in most of his work, including his famous Falling Water. The Guggenheim is different. It lacks angles of any kind and has almost no naturalistic elements. It is stark white and stucco, despite him wanting to cover it in shiny marble. Without knowing his work leading up to the museum, one may think the design came out of nowhere. However, he was actually practicing with curves and more organic shapes for a while leading up to it. The best examples of preliminary designs are the Morris Store in San Fransisco and the Ferrari Showroom. He did these once he started experimenting in his later years, It is fascinating to me how people develop and how ideas develop. This is a great addition to my last journal entry where I touched upon where someone goes after they peak. In my opinion, I prefer Frank Lloyd Wright’s evolution to Le Corbusier’s. His style evolved into something brand new, beautiful, iconic, and yet true to himself. I find his building blocks of inspiration really really cool. How he always was looking on the things he’s done, and instead of that holding him back, it propelled him forward to evolve his style and design. Frank Lloyd Wright was an incredibly successful architect, as was Mies van der Rohe. However, everyone needs to begin somewhere in the field, and many budding architects dream of working with men like this. One of these upcoming designers was Eero Saarinen. One of his most iconic pieces, a massive sculpture, is the St. Louis Jefferson Westward Expansion Memorial. It is unique, it is iconic. Yet, he was Mies van der Rohe’s student, and you can tell by looking at his work. A lot of Saarinen’s work features a grid-like, linear, steel framed design that is very in tune with his mentor’s. The influence and inspiration is clear. He did a lot of work that was almost a mirror image of what Mies has done, and then he created the Chapel at MIT. Something completely different. Where did the inspiration for that come from? I think this is a really cool example of what happens when you have been influenced by someone for so long and then you finally break out of that. Saarinen’s Mies-inspired structures were beautiful and very well designed, but they were not entirely his own. Something prompted him to break away from that, to stand on his own two feet, and design something unique to him. The chapel is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. A cylindrical structure with no windows, covered in brick, with an interesting pattern on the bottom. It is easy to turn inspiration into influence when looking at the work of great architects and artists, after all, they have perfected their own designs. But once an upcoming artist breaks away from the pressure to live up to that by imitation, they create stand out work of their own. Inspiration is a funny thing. I think it is how styles are created and trends happen. People get inspired by other popular things at the same time. Inspiration can come from anywhere. Where is the line between inspiration and imitation? Now thats a question I have. Do styles happen by people blatantly copying each other? How is that different? Anyway, inspiration can truly come from anywhere and it is so cool to be able to follow an architects work and see how they have developed and changed over time. I know I can look at my own work and see development and improvement. I look forward to the future to see what I create and what my contemporaries end up doing. Perhaps my classmates and I will end up working for or being inspired by one another.
