Project: Public Fan Letter
I have been inspired by you since I was in third grade and I heard about this bird being built in Milwaukee. A few years after the Art Museum was completed my class took a trip to look at an art exhibit. When we got there I was more interested in the new bright and beautiful building than I was the art inside of it. You have intrigued me by the way you incorporate sculpture into your work. When deciding what I wanted to study in college I thought about your work and how you achieved and accomplished so much in a short period of time. For some time I was debating on if I should go after engineering or architecture. Ultimately choosing architecture, it has shown me how to explore my creative ideas and incorporate the structural aspects into them. Growing up in Wisconsin there is more grass and farm land than beautiful buildings. You inspired me to explore and discover what the world has to offer. Getting outside my comfort zone, traveling different places, and seeing the world around me has opened my creativity to discover new ways of creating. Thank you for allowing me to discover and achieve new goals that I didn’t know even existed.
Kaitlin Esche
Dear Marion Mahony Griffin,
As the first licensed female architect in Illinois you worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and developed into a wonderful renderer. While surrounded by the greatness of the men in architecture that you worked with you managed to rise above and make a name for yourself. The colors and vegetation that you have throughout your perspectives gives an idealistic view of the buildings. Adding to the composition at times you’ve put plans and sections into a perspective in a beautifully balanced way. This makes me want to focus more greatly on not just the building itself, but the context of what surrounds the building. By setting up the scene for where a building will stand it helps sell the idea by putting the design into a real world environment. Too often in the early designs of an architecture student is a bare background present. The context around your buildings seemed to change a lot. From India to Australia you followed the opportunities that were presented to you. I enjoy traveling, being exposed to new places and new cultures so I hope that I am able to do the same in my future endeavors. Your renderings stand today as an inspiration to my own rendering style. I have a ways to go until I can draw trees as realistically as you, but I will get there. Thank you for leaving such great examples of perspectives around for students like myself to learn from.
Jade Burkart
Raffael DiLauro’s art work is vibrant and loud. Each of his pieces tells a story for the public eye to think about. I have found inspiration in Raffael’s work. His style is abstract and has a way to move people and let them relate. When I was younger, I was starting out how to draw and my favorite things to draw were fairies. I used to show my drawings to Raffael (he is my uncle), and he would always tell me he loved them and show me how to fix them. Knowing Raffael my entire life and having an artist as an uncle has been a huge impact on my life. Being able to discuss art and design with someone who does it for a living is an amazing opportunity to know how someone else thinks. Raffael is an inspiration to me because he is a brilliant, helpful, caring, and very talented. He offers these aspects of himself to others who need it. He is truly a wonderful man.
Karina Brown
As my interest in architecture grows and develops, I have found that I have a growing admiration for your work. It first began with Taliesin West as I loved the way the building became a part of the landscape and utilized materials found on site. Also, I particularly enjoyed your use of a white canvas roof over your buildings as it created interesting interior spaces. Aside from my experiences and appreciation for Taliesin West, recently an article on the Fir Tree House made me realize how much I enjoy admiring your work. Since this house has no right angles, I have become eager to experiment with more than just the typical 90 degree corner. Also, after being able to view a large number of your original drawings on display in recent months, I wanted to let you know that I really admire how dynamic and engaging your work was even though it was just on paper. One last thing that I wanted to let you know was that the way you strive to make your architecture one with its surroundings, has influenced my work while I am in school.
Thank you for inspiring me,
Loren Carrier
Dear Renzo,
My name is Caleb Menard; I am currently a second year architecture student at Norwich University, in a small, rural area of Vermont. I have come to admire your work, often incorporating ideas from your work within my own designs. I find your work very inspirational, with your ideas of “high-tech”, and energy-efficient green design. One design in particular is your design in Bern, Switzerland, the Zentrum Paul Klee building. I have been very interested in creating architecture with curved structures, and love the idea of linking these three giant curves with a common, rectilinear structure through the sides of each. I also admire how this design gives way to the natural environment, almost receding into the landscape toward the back of the building. This idea of building with nature, and creating green buildings around is the greatest concept I admire about your designs, and an idea, I believe, will be the future of architecture.
Your fan,
Caleb Menard
To John Pawson,
Mr. Pawson you have been an inspiration for me. Since I looked at your work, I have changed the way I think when I design. I learned from you that simplicity is the key and that everything in a building should have a meaning. Now every time I face a new project I try to complete it by using the least amount of material and keep it as simple as possible, but at the same time being able to show my design idea.
I hope someday I would have the chance to meet you and have a talk with you.
Regards,
Pedro Rodriguez
Dear Mr. Gehry,
I would like to thank you for being such an inspiration to me. Your work is incredible, and has been a great source of ideas throughout my studio work this year. I have been particular interested in your use of metals especially after my trip out West, where I was able to see your Experience Music Project building in Seattle, Washington. After that I began to search further into your projects. Some of my favorite designs of yours include Fish in Barcelona, Spain, Weisman Art Museum, and the Jay Pritzker Pavillion. I would have to say though that my absolute favorite building designed by you would be The Guggenheim. I really enjoy how the building takes on two different personas, one at night time as well as during the day. It is my pleasure to say that you are certainly one of, if not my favorite architect, and at all times I am certainly looking to infuse my designs with a bit of your flavor.
Best Regards,
Adam Wiles-Rosell
To Banksy,
Or whoever you are,
Your art can be found on streets all around the world, expressing common beliefs of many cultures. Your art can be determined as political, but you almost never get negative responses, like many political cartoonists. There is a subculture of graffiti art in the world, and you are a large part of that movement. You point out flaws in the system in a clever, artistic way though the use of puns and juxtapositions that many of us would never think of on our own. Personally, my favorite is the “flower chucker”. A man in the correct stance to throw a grenade, or an equally devastating handheld weapon, but you have replaced the negativity with a simple arrangement of flowers, which pose quite the opposite connotation. Most of the artwork I have come across makes me laugh, because you pick out the simple things in life and expand them into questions of reality. A unique technique you seem to repeat is finding forms existing in the city already to use as a starting point for your art. Such as the round fire alarm on the wall, where you placed small sperm swimming towards. In my mind, if art can make people laugh, they appreciate it more. The aesthetics of your stencils also seem to jump out onto the sidewalks and alleyways, with a dominant appearance. Keep the public laughing and the community service members busy on the streets.
Andrew Dubenetsky
Dear Tadao Ando,
Ever since i first was introduced to your work I was very much inspired and intrigued by your work. I throughly enjoy you concept of making every space a ceremonial space in its own way whether its a church or a living room and how much different they serve a two separate but important life functions. Some of your work that really challenges my thinking in my designs is your experimenting with light and what types of things are possible when you experiment with it. This work has a big impact on me, because not only do I feel light serves a huge purpose in all design, but how different light can give you different feelings about a space. I want to try and incorporate more of your type of natural light type work into my own designs.
The biggest impact you have had on me as a designer was the way that you added work in a space as a part of its surroundings. This could be nature or in a city, but wherever it is you find a way to place it in a space to make it seem like it belongs. I have a strong belief when i think about designing, especially in a setting that is away from cities and out in nature that there is no need to completely remove what is at the site and start with a new flat pallete to work with. There is a beauty to the nature that is already there so why not use what is there and celebrate the beauty it has to offer. As a architecture community everyone is into the green trend that includes things like leed standards and all the different ratings a building can get depending on how energy efficient a building can get. I feel as if you can build the building so is a part of nature and can be one with it. I feel that if you designing the way you do with making the building a part of nature instead of landscaping to mimic the building you have to keep those green properties or you can’t have a successful design in your style.
Your circulation plans are just done right brilliant, I always and blown away when i look at them, because it is hard enough to find creative paths of circulation in a two-dimensional sense. It just proves how much of an understanding you as a designer have of your whole design from start to finish. The trait that comes to mind is attention to detail and the level at which you are at is amazing and i could only hope to have the amount of attention to detail at some point in my career as a designer.
I am privaledged to be able to see your work and to see the people that have influenced you has taught me a lot and made me think about what I can do different in my designs. The biggest impact that you had on me was what you said about one of the people that inspired you and it was how much you were influenced and liked Vincent Van Gogh. It was because of how successful he was as an artist and the reaction his work gets, you said you wanted to design to get that type of reaction out of your work and that is something that im going to try to do with my designs, it will be a constant push to always improve my designs until i can get that type of reaction.
Sincerely,
Brandon Place
I admire you so
You know how to wow the crowd
And you aren’t afraid to be loud and proud
You created Modernism
What a system!
You are a man of great talents
Your simplicity and clarity create the balance
You left your mark around the globe
You look quite swell in a robe
Mr. Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe
Your architecture is like a Christmas morning bow
Your minimal framework
Is just one perk
Your ambition to create a new tongue
Pulls the air right out of my lung
You strived for a unified expression
Which left quite the impression
In the end your architecture is fantastic
And people return like elastic
Your style is totally awesome
And one day I hope to blossom
Architecture was your calling
But you left the historians brawling
Mr. Mies Van der Rohe
I admire you so
DISCLAIMER:
Dear Mies Van der Rohe,
Hello! My name is Shannon Haggerty and I am currently a sophomore architecture student at Norwich University. I am a huge fan of yours, but I realize you are dead. My deepest apologies, I hope while you lived your life was fantastic. To be honest, I probably would have admired from afar, but my professors requested it. In my opinion, you lived your life to the fullest, doing what you loved. Making structures that will stand forever telling the story of your ideas and accomplishments.
Congratulations to giving birth to the style of Modernism. Your ‘less is more’ is genius and can be applied to anything and everything. I love your basic cubic blocks that have planes protruding and penetrating your buildings. Your simplicity and clarity is rather complicated, but I think that is what makes it beautiful. The minimal framework creates the illusion that it’s floating and free standing, but when the structure is seen, it portrays the perfect contrast to the glass that makes up the rest of the building.
Your designs inspire me to defy the boundaries and keep striving towards my dream. You have inspired me to be the best that I can and to test the limits. Don’t stay within the box and to have fun. Your buildings are beautiful and have a way to speak to their surroundings. And one day I wish to be half the architect you were.
Your Aspiring Fan,
Shannon
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