Bob Clark Beyond: Inspiration

latest inspiration posts

June's Featured Architect: Ralph Johnson

Ralph Johnson is an award-winning architect who has a deep understanding and appreciation of his hometown of Chicago. His work is instantly recognizable by many who know the city well, and he has added to a long and proud tradition of the Windy City setting new standards with its innovative architectural landscape. Born on the South Side of Chicago, Ralph Johnson was destined for a bright future in architecture, since he grew up right down the street from Frank Lloyd Wright’s infamous R.W. Evans House. He received his Bachelor of Architecture in 1971 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and he went on to receive his Master of Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1973. Johnson found that by entering numerous architectural competitions in the years after graduating, he began to develop his own personal approach to design and forge his own path. It would eventually take him back to Chicago to work for a firm he dreamed of being a part of. He joined Perkins&Will after coming back to his hometown, where he has worked ever since.

June's Featured Artist: Nathaniel Mary Quinn

Nathaniel Mary Quinn is an artist whose incredible work stays with you. Known for his captivating collage-like portraits, Quinn has created a distinct style that is a unique blend between mixed media drawings and paintings of fragmented figures that play with the viewer’s perception of identity. Quinn was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, where he grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes public housing project. It was here that he discovered an early passion for drawing, and when was in the ninth grade, he received a scholarship to study at Culver Academy boarding school in Indiana. While enrolled there, Quinn was told that his mother had passed away suddenly, and when returning home from school for Thanksgiving, he also found that the rest of his family had abandoned his childhood home with no explanation.

Wildhorse Village

In Chesterfield, Missouri, not too far from where I grew up, we’re currently hard at work on a massive multi-use development that’s going to be a complete transformation for the area. Serving as a brand-new urban center for the suburb, Wildhorse Village is going to offer 1 million square feet of office space, 150 for-sale residences, 500 apartments, and 100,000 square feet of retail space that spans across 80 acres of land. We’re delivering on this outstanding project through Clayco’s integrated services that leverage both CRG and Lamar Johnson Collaborative. Once completed, Wildhorse Village will include scenic lakefront locations for working, living, and playing and will include some amazing amenities like boardwalks, parks, an amphitheater, and a boathouse.

May's Featured Architect: Frank Gehry

There are very few architects that are as widely celebrated and recognized today as Frank Gehry. Honestly, at this point, Frank stands alone at the top. A constant innovator, a disruptor of traditional practices, and a creative visionary, Frank has designed iconic buildings that are found all over the world, and each of them is more stunning and unique than the next. His works stand alone and are unaligned with any traditional styles, and he’s played a crucial role in shaping a whole new chapter of architecture and design. In addition to being known as a revolutionary, Frank is also famously known for being unapproachable and is often dubbed by people in the industry as being difficult to work with. In my personal experience spending some time with Frank a few years ago, I found the complete opposite to be true.

McCormick Distribution Center

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that good food brings people together. Any family chef knows just how important different spices are to bringing out the flavors of all kinds of dishes.

Pfizer R&D Facility - Chesterfield, Missouri

At Clayco, we believe that every one of our projects is important and play a crucial role in the neighborhoods and communities they are located in. Over the past year, perhaps none of these buildings has taken on a more important role for the entire world than Pfizer’s new research and development facility located just outside of my hometown of St. Louis in Chesterfield, Missouri. Designed in accordance with LEED sustainability certification standards, Pfizer’s cutting-edge research and development campus includes a combined 295,000 square feet of flexible laboratories and open office space, supporting its development capabilities in biologics and vaccine therapy. This brand-new project has not only become an important hub for Pfizer in the Midwest region, but is also currently the place where every Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine dose originates.

Inspiration

I have always had an insatiable curiosity

What causes me to get out of bed every morning is driven by inspiration. Ever since I was a little boy, I was inspired by my insatiable curiosity, which caused me to be a reader, a thinker, and a dreamer.

I can remember being inspired by seeing Bobby Kennedy on TV and watching videotapes of Martin Luther King Jr., and being deeply saddened by their assassination even though I was only 10 years old when I experienced all of this.

As a little boy, rocket flight was a big thing. I remember being fascinated by the moon and the stars and the astronauts exploring them.As humans we are achieving remarkable things that only a handful of years before were just in the imagination.