Where does inspiration come from, and why do architects often deny its source?

摘要

You can't visit Richard Meier's Getty Center in Los Angeles without thinking of Hadrian's Villa, the palace built near Tivoli, a few miles east of Rome, by the great Roman emperor in about the year 120. Everything about the Getty reminds you of the villa. You can't look at the plan of one without thinking of the other. In both, grids collide at angles, often with round elements as knuckles where two grids meet. There are similarities in the water features and in the way white accents seem to gather the sun and bring it down to earth-accents that are mythological statues at Hadrian's Villa and abstract architectural elements at the Getty.