In an other life, I might have been an architect.
That is, if in that other life I actually had math skills.
But it would have been ultimately satisfying to design and see built buildings great and small. Design Editor in chief Jay has sent a link to a story about a new dorm built for Gallaudet University, the nation's only University for the deaf. And from colors to materials, the structure is custom made for those students:
...stylistic impressions miss the point: spatial dynamics rule. Corridors are six-feet, eight-inches wide, so two people walking abreast have adequate space between them to sign. Dorm room doors were inset by two feet on both sides of the hall to carve out gathering places 11-feet wide. Built-in seats outside each door encourage groups to form. A lighting system announces a visitor’s arrival. In the lobby and on residential floors, blind intersections were banished in favor of glass-walled corners. (An earlier experiment with curving walls did not prevent surprise encounters. People simply hugged the curve and continued to run into each other.)
Come to think of it, in addition to the math skills I would also need improved everything else skills too. C'est la vie!
An interesting factoid about Gallaudet University: Union Station in DC was being designed a few years after the school was established.
ReplyDeletePresident Edward Miner Gallaudet was a friend of Abraham Lincoln, and he successfully persuaded the President of the United States to spare the campus. That's why train tracks out of Union Station veer north before heading northeast.
Very interesting, Jay, Thanks!
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