Architect Diaz Alonso Inspires Olga’s Creative Spirit

by Olga Shuklina

On October 1, 2019, I was lucky to attend the lecture Maestros de Architectura: Hernan Diaz Alonso, which was hosted in District Architecture Center in Washington DC. Diaz Alonso is a star in the architecture world. He is a director of Sci Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture), which is considered one of the best architecture schools in the US, and founder of HDA-X architects. He is mostly famous because of his creative works, which he showed during the lecture.

Diaz Alonso considers himself as a classical architect and denies that he is an artist. However, he agrees that his works have an artistic effect. He finds an inspiration in alternative forms of beauty, animation, and technology, which he uses in creating sculptures by incorporating math algorithms.  He believes in a partnership between technology and a human that gives broader possibilities for creation.

Diaz Alonso is very charismatic and he joked a lot during his lecture. He said that he started to appreciate idea of minimalism after he made a sculpture that was consisted of 300 different pieces. However, he stated his position as “More is more,” opposing views of such prominent architects as  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who said: “More is less” and Robert Venturi, who said: “Less is a bore.”

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