CREATIVE CURIOSITY

The future is informed and projected from what we acquired from the past.

In this sense, the past becomes the future - a paradox.

I regularly ask international freshers which buildings they would like to explore and which buildings they would show their parents. The overwhelming answer is the city's historic buildings.

One reason for this is the accumulated historicity, the memory that the building stands for. The fascination of connecting with the greatness and mastery of the generations before us.

The other reason is the aesthetic appeal and the abundance of detail. A sleek, gleaming high-rise has mainly its shape and size as external attributes. In contrast, most historical structures reveal much of the craftsmanship and material and show the traces of human labour, traces of change.

Even Brutalism and Modernism still exhibited some of these qualities.

With increasing automation in construction, the tangible qualities and traces of human craftsmanship are disappearing, increasing the importance and relevance of historical buildings.

MUSIC, ART, LITERATURE 

Self-informed, self-centred, self-fertilising architecture generated by architecture strikes me as a boring, dead path. Architecture arises from cultural expression and is part of cultural expression. The inspiration for the design, for the quality of space, could come from a piece of music, a poem, or a painting.

We may find further insight and inspiration for architecture in the non-architectural literature.

We may even find insight and inspiration by observing fashion, past and present.

One of the greatest sources for the musically gifted or sensitive listener is the music itself.

The relationship of harmonies, the relationship of rhythm and melody and the emotions generated thereby can be a rich source and inspiration for architectural expression.

In several seminars, students and teachers explore these relationships and the synergies that arise between cultural forms of expression. A field that invites experimentation and research: how poetry can become architecture, how music can become architecture and vice versa.  Students always gain much stimulation from related interactive seminars.