Antoine Predock, whose architectural firm is located just off Route 66 in Albuquerque, won the highly prestigious Gold Medal a few days ago from the American Institute of Architects.
This report from the Dallas Morning News says the Mother Road helps spark Predock in his creations.
Antoine Predock lives just off Route 66, the great American road that runs from Chicago to Los Angeles past his downtown Albuquerque studio. Most architects couldn’t care less, whereas he has found its motel, low-rider, rubber-tomahawk culture a bottomless source of inspiration. He is a Western architect who really understands the West, not just the purple mountains’ majesty but also the myths, the marginal cultures, the haunted perspectives generated by too much space and too few people. …
… The exploratory process is the same when he is working in the Far East as in the Far West. In designing the National Palace of Art in Taiwan, he traveled the Silk Road, looking at caves, shrines and mountain villages to create a simulated jade and ice mountain, the cooling mountain of the Chinese scrolls, covered in a kind of warrior bronze. In his mind, the Silk Road and Route 66 are not so different as one might think.
“Route 66 was emblematic of the true Wild West, when land was a commodity and buildings were PR and a car was your friend,” he explains. “A similar kind of commercial dance occurred along the Silk Road, and for strikingly similar reasons.”
You can see Predock’s architectural work at his Web site here.
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