I would like to start this blog by asking everyone – Is
there anything in architecture that is truly, entirely original?
I personally don’t think so. Just take history as an
example. Classical architecture was reinterpreted in the renaissance movement
and then more or less directly applied in neoclassical design as well. If you
start looking at famous buildings from famous architects, you can see
similarities there too. You could take Eero Saarinen’s TWA flight centre and Zaha
Hadid’s London Olympics Aqautic Centre and you would find certain parts of the
buildings share an uncanny resemblance. Would you then say that one of them
copied the other? Or was one inspired by the other?
Just last week we saw an interesting video on the 7 habits
of an effective artist (7 habits which could very well be applied to
architecture as well). One of those habits is the ability to steal. Now before
everyone’s moral compass starts pointing in the wrong directions let me make
myself clear – I don’t mean one should lift off someone’s work and directly
copy it. What I mean is that one should look at others work, study them, find
inspiration in them, learn from them and
if there ever comes a time when you need to replicate someone’s work
then give due credit for the same.
The power of inspiration is something incredible to tap into.
Today with half of our team on various sites, the rest of us made good use of
the amount of space in the office. We went about our usual work day till Sai
brought down some old Architectural Digest magazines for reference in one of
our design discussions. Just going through some of the amazing work that other
people have done fueled all of us to think more about what we were doing. A
simple seed of an idea that started off with inspiration then became a
conversation filled with ideas for our own projects. We sat there going through
magazine after magazine, discussing building after building. Some were relevant
to our project, others completely irrelevant and yet all of them served their singular
purpose – to inspire us!
-Mannat
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