Juliet asked, “What’s in a name?” While she’s figuring that one out, I’ll ask my question – “What’s in a building?”.

 

Obviously, when you look at a building, there are a few things that you will notice firsthand, like the size. If you drive through a suburban neighborhood, you will not find much above 2 stories, but if you take a quick flight out to Dubai, you will find the Burj Khalifa has a little bit more than that – 161 more to be exact. The shape of a building is also important to catch a viewer’s eye. The simplest buildings are rectangular prisms with evenly spaced windows, but those structures are the kind your eyes will gloss over. Others use the shape of the building to guide your eyes and draw you in. Take, for example, the world-famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. 

 

As a current student in Ceramics 1, I can confidently say that I’ve seen about 5 iterations of this shape, in clay, among my classmates when the objective was a square. Regardless of how bizarre this building may be, it is certainly an eye catcher. With the aforementioned box building, the only thing your eyes can trace are the edges – but even that’s a stretch because box buildings are painfully boring, at least for me, and the last thing I want to do is let my eyes linger on those when there are certainly more beautiful things to be found. With the Guggenheim though, there is so much your eyes can trace – the different shaped volumes and how the walls curve, bend, and dip is just a start. 

Beyond the shape of a building, the materials and how they work together is also an integral part of how a building is perceived. Going back to the Guggenheim example, the exterior of the building is covered in metal paneling. Combined with the odd shape of the museum, the material choice for the exterior creates a futuristic look that definitely draws in a viewer. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was walking through the building and accidentally passed into the Matrix (sorry if that’s not how it works, I never watched the movie). You can see how the sunlight reflects off the paneling and accentuates its curves and sharp angles. 

The Guggenheim (which, in my opinion, would be the ideal setting for an Ocean’s 11-esque art heist movie), was designed by Frank Gehry, an architect famous for work exactly like this – metallic, serpentine, and experimental. I had the opportunity to visit one of his buildings – the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, while I was visiting a few years ago. This museum also includes the warped walls and reflective materials that we can see in the Guggenheim. Seeing the continuity between Gehry’s designs, even while crossing country borders, was eye-opening. If you have a minute, maybe you can do a quick Google search of Frank Gehry. Click on the “Images” tab, and just scroll for a minute. Look at how so many of his designs are incredibly unique, yet share so many of the same characteristics. Being able to identify the architect of a building solely by looking at it is another reason I ask “What’s in a building?” There are an infinite number of little quirks and details that an architect may include in a building, and looking for clues to who the architect is is intriguing. So next time you go downtown, you might be able to spot some of Chicago’s very own Frank Gehry work (Hint: even though it’s not a building, the structure is beautiful, but maybe not as beautiful as the music coming out of it).

 

Architecture is honestly an endless field. What I have described here is barely scratching the surface of everything you might see when you look at a building. Every brick, every window, every door knob – the details are truly infinite, and you could spend hours just searching for them in one building. Next time you walk down the street, I say pop in your headphones, put on your favorite playlist, and just look.

 

My parents opted me in for a Montessori education before I moved to elementary school. I later asked them why, and they said a Montessori education gave me an opportunity to learn foundational skills in an intuitive, self-guided way. Every day, the students could choose individually what activities we wanted to do. Art, blocks, puzzles, and going outside were all options. Still, I would always drift towards the rack of books my teacher kept. It was so enjoyable to stroke an illustration on the page before me, or listen to my teacher’s soothing voice as she read a book about animals to the class. Some days, she would even sit by me as I read so I could sound out the words and learn about sentence structure, voice, and other literary building blocks.

Without that first teacher, my love for reading would not be as strong as it is now. Even more than that, my mother was a central figure in my reading journey. She was the one who would drive me to the library and let me borrow six books that I would finish in three days. When I did not have school to take up my time, she would take me to local restaurants and libraries so I could sign up for summer reading programs. At night, she reminded me that sleep was more important than my books, even though I never listened. Funnily enough, even though she was one of my greatest reading supporters, I never saw her read. I would ask her why, and she just claimed she wished she could but did not get the time to. As a young child, this confused me – what could possibly be more important than reading? Eventually, I realized what was important – her family. She was an immigrant and mother of two kids – she did not have time to sit down and leisurely leaf through a book. She was constantly being bumped around to schools, classes, and grocery stores. Still, she always took time out of her busy schedule to settle down with me and read a book about a family of animals or a princess and her talking horse. Thanks to my older brother, my mom had stacks of children’s books that she could pass off to me when I was getting annoying. I clearly remember the cover of one of these books. It was dark blue, depicting a hand drawn, glittering Eiffel Tower against a starry night. Two children rode off into the distance on a bicycle that sparkled with ancient magic. The top of the cover was the canopy of a tree with a small brown tree house lodged between the branches, reading Magic Tree House in gold lettering.

Looking back, the volume of Magic Tree House books I read as a child foretold my obsession with fantasy and science fiction. They gave me a way to escape my average suburban life to ancient worlds across the planet with two characters that I could relate to. There was the older brother, Jack, who I always compared to my older brother even though he was more like me. We were both cautious and wanted to follow the rules to stay safe. Every time Jack tried to stop Annie from trying to find the tree house, I would be endlessly frustrated with him. It is summer and school is out, why not go for an adventure? Still, I would have done the same thing in his place. His narrative foil was his sister, Annie, who I always found a little annoying because she wanted to try everything new. Like my brother, she was an absolute adventurer and wouldn’t hesitate to drag her reluctant partner in crime along with her. Even though I was content to explore through reading, these books showed me I could explore in real life too. I did not have to wait for the words on the page to come alive – I could take advantage of the hidden possibilities around me.

Reading fantasy books as a child was incredibly important to my child. By putting myself in another kid’s shoes, I got my first taste of literary analysis and interpreting through different lenses. If my early school days taught me how to pick up a book and interpret the words inside of it, reading children’s fantasy when I was young taught me to expand the tiny universe in my mind to a land of adventure and enjoyment.