Have you every looked at a building or interior or heard about a building and wondered what they were thinking or what the inspiration was that gave the building or interior its form? For me the inspiration of a space or a building comes in many ways, from the words that our clients use to their products or services or from the new image that they are trying to put forth to the world.
I’m sure many are familiar with the Denver airport, which was inspired and designed to emulate the snow-capped mountains that surround it and also to evoke the early history of Colorado where Native American teepees were set across the Great plains. It is also known for being the second largest public works project in the world.
Denver’s International airport was designed by Fentress Bradburn Architects which is now known as Fentress Architects.
Recently I have heard on the radio about a building in Australia that was inspired by Beyoncé’s curves… interesting I thought and using our trusty Google set out to find out more, but more importantly find out how this would translate into an architectural form.
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Architects, Elenberg Fraser, used the singer’s famous form and the video for her song “Ghost” which features dancers wrapped in fabric as their inspiration. You can read more and view the video in this link in the Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/architectural-digest/this-new-building-was-ins_b_7794034.html
This got me thinking about other buildings/ environments inspired by music. For this I once again turned back to Google and found at inhabitat.com a few other environments inspired in some way by music. The first was a project called
Dithyrambalina’s Music Box – A Village Built for Music.
As quoted from the website:
“The project is located in New Orleans, which is known for its jazz music and plethora of unique architectural styles, but artist Dithyrambalina took the two to another level by creating houses that double as music boxes. A collaboration between New Orleans Airlift and Brooklyn artist, Swoon, The Music Box was made up of little houses built from salvaged materials, reclaimed windows and instruments all locally sourced. Each of the houses, designed by sound artists, were equipped with custom musical instruments such as the Water-Organ, a keyboard that played music through water, and Noise Floor, floorboards that amplified creaks.” The Music Box is now closed, but Dithyrambalina continues to be a dynamic lab for art and music.”
In the same online article was Coca-Cola’s Beatbox Pavilion for the 2012 London Olympics, designed by London based architects Asif Khan and Pernilla Ohrstedt, which allows visitors to remix their own Olympic sounds in an interactive fashion as they interact with the pavilion and its translucent air pillows.
As with any good Google search one’s path rarely stays on topic….. but during this trek, I did find some other interesting and maybe not so interesting buildings with a defined inspirational root … such as…..
The Hongzhu Housing Sales Center in Taiwan designed, by Lab Modus in Taipei City, to look like or emulate the outer scales of a traditional dragon using perforated metal.
And then of course there are others… like the Longaberger Company’s Headquarters in Ohio ( found in strangeline.net and mentalfloss.com )…
Designed to look like a replica of the Medium Basket that the company makes out of maple… this building’s handles are heated to prevent the formation of ice…
But then at last my zigzag of a trek through the Internet brought me back home to Boston to our beloved Milk Bottle, originally designed in 1933 by Arthur Gagnon for his ice cream stand in Taunton, MA, (who knew it was originally in Taunton). After a few ownership changes and a sail from Quincy to Boston it is located where we all know and love it – outside of the Children’s Museum in Boston’s Fort Point Channel District. Fun Fact: it is 40 feet tall and would hold 58,000 gallons of milk… (that’s a lot of milk)
There are many things in this world (and on the internet) that can and may inspire one to do great spaces and architecture …. The trick is to have one in the beginning and to hold true to it throughout the design process…
– Tom
