Benjamin Wey’s Inspirations…
“And just as we acquaint ourselves with materials, just as we must understand functions, so we must become familiar with the psychological and spiritual factors of our day. No cultural activity is possible otherwise; for we are dependent on the spirit of our time.”
-Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Benjamin Wey draws his design inspirations from a variety of sources, such as from existing structures, modern art sculptures and paintings, other architects’ philosophies, and nature. Although some find it hard to believe that someone with such a mathematically inclined mind like Benjamin Wey’s would have an ultra-creative, even dreamer-like quality about him, Benjamin Wey is impassioned by the objects and people that surround him in the same way musicians, photographers, lyricist, poets, painters, and writers are inspired by the persons and things they encounter in their daily lives, which drive them to compose or create art. Everyday influences find their way into Benjamin Wey’s work and leave their mark on everything he does. Some of his earliest memories of inspiration include something as simple as dirt.
When he was a child, he would spend hours everyday playing in the dirt, painstakingly constructing miniature structures for his toy cars, trains, trucks, and airplanes. As he grew older, he found more inspiration by looking up from the dirt and exploring the world outside himself and beyond his backyard. He discovered a nearby construction site, and he would pass by it every day on his way to school. Soon every piece of artwork, every school project, and every show and tell involved something related to construction or design. By the time he entered high school, he was spending the majority of his free time drafting scaled blueprints of buildings and homes he had seen or imagined, and with each successive year and every construction apprenticeship he worked, his affinity for civil engineering grew. In college, his professors, textbooks, and construction supervisory served as his next sources of inspiration, but following his graduate commencement ceremony, he began to find inspiration in everything from waterfalls and pieces of driftwood to other architects’ design styles and their structures.
Being a very hands-on individual, Benjamin Wey spends a great deal of his time traveling to various places around the country, touring historic sites, modern homes, and Pritzker Prize-winning structures, all the while cultivating priceless inspiration. Revelation has also found him at a number of arts and cultural events, which he attends every chance he gets. In addition, Benjamin Wey thoroughly enjoys being apart of the annual Stern Grove Festival, Tapestry in Talent, and Sunset Magazine’s Celebration Weekends. He is also very fond of postmodern art and has been inspired at art exhibits given in honor of such artists as Roger Brown, Louise Lawler, and Barbara Kruger, but most importantly, Benjamin Wey credits his greatest and most original inspired designs to other celebrated architects, like Philip Johnson, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Santiago Calatrava, Gert Wingardh, and Frank Lloyd Wright, for their evident displays of mastery in their remarkable structures.