Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava: lesson about “Conscious Inspiration”

Eliinbar Sketches 2013 – Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava practicing “Conscious Inspiration”

Kurt Cobain  , Nirvana’s  music band songwriter,guitarist and lead singer was proud to share with us his musical influences (Inspiration Sources)…. the Beatles,Pixies,Sonic Youth ,R.E.M ,Led Zeppelin ,Black Sabbath and other well known music Bands.

So why architects , always claim they get inspired in their dreams?

I learned during  my journey in this blog,  that inspiration from existing buildings, is common among architects.

 But I also learned something else,

A relatively large group of architects lack the “tools” to make the distinction between “copy-paste” and Conscious Inspiration.

 In this blog I want ,to clarify the differences between the disturbing phenomenon that is commonly called “copy-paste” , and the positive phenomenon I encourage …. Conscious Inspiration.

In my next posts, I intend to suggest Inspiration techniques, that will help young architects to get inspired from existing buildings….in a CONSCIOUS way

Let’s look at the short story I brought today

this is Halliday Avray-Wilson, Twisting Male Torso Sculpture

And this is the Santiago Calatrava’s Twisting Torso Sculpture from 1999

Inspired by Halliday Avray-Wilson’s, Twisting Male Torso Sculpture

The next image is Santiago Calatrava’s sketch showing how he got inspired from Halliday Avray-Wilson , Twisting Male  Torso Sculpture (right) – when he designed the HSB Turning Torso in Malmo Sweden (left)

And this is Frank O. Gehry’s building in Hanover Germany from 1999-2001

In 2001-2005 Santiago Calatrava realized his vision from 1999, with the HSB Turning Torso in Malmo Sweden, shown in the next image

Eliinbar Sketches 2013 -Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava practicing  Conscious Inspiration.

You probably noticed the morphological resemblance between Frank Gehry’s twisted building in Hanover Germany and Santiago Calatrava’s HSB Turning Torso in Malmo.

Curious coincidence, the two projects were designed and built during the same years…. One may assume that this is another typical example of Conscious inspiration.

what did I learn from this post?

 Santiago Calatrava’s inspiration source for the HSB Turning Torso in Malmo was Halliday Avray-Wilson’s ,Twisting Male  Torso Sculpture. This Is a typical example of an “inspiration source” that is not an existing building.

 And Frank Gehry’s inspiration source for the twisted building in Hanover Germany, is a typical example of an “inspiration source” that is an existing building.

 So we can distinguish between two types of Inspiration Sources.

Inspiration from the “Outside world of architecture” ,like  in the case of  Santiago  Calatrava’s HSB Turning Torso.

and Inspiration from the “Inside world of architecture“,  like  in the case of Frank Gehry’s twisted building in Hanover Germany.