International Architects Who Influenced Me

While in the United States, after my return, and on my many travels abroad, I was influenced to some degree by the work of certain international architects and by excellent buildings designed by others, among them:

• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Paul Rudolph
• Richard Neutra
• Erich Mendelsohn
• Alvar Aalto
• Eero Saarinen
• and Japanese architects such as Yamasaki and Kenzo Tange

It is worth listing some of the buildings that added much to my architectural store, and which bring back happy artistic and personal memories when I look through my travel albums:

• The Hyatt Regency hotel, San Francisco.
• The cultural and convention centre, Acapulco, Mexico.
• The New Otani hotel, Tokyo.
• The Congress Centre, Hamburg.
• The international centre in Paris.
• The Princess hotel, Acapulco.
• The new City Hall and the Ontario Science Centre, Toronto.
• The Olympic city and commercial centre, Montreal.
• A hotel near Athens, Greece.
• The Totem residential tower on the Seine, Paris.
• The Meliá Don Pepe hotel in Marbella on the Costa del Sol, and the Alhambra in Granada.

Although I visited most of these in the 1970s and early 1980s, I believe they still deserve study, for each holds something of value to an architect.

Written in Arabic by Mostafa Shawky. English translation.