Walking Among Giants

In it's very name, it's symbolic of why we are here. "Education." It seems simple, obvious, but too often it's lost on us. That's the reason why people go to college, theoretically. To gain an education, for whatever particular purpose it may serve us.

Education Building, main entrance.

At first glance, Education Building is an odd duckling. It's a brick wearing a sombrero, it's got a pit on one side and a garden on the other. It isn't immediately obvious what it is trying to accomplish, if you don't know what you're looking for.

Parthenon, Athens, Greece.

Once you do, though, the familial resemblances begin to sink in. "Good artists copy, great artists steal," right? And you may begin to see how Education Building was, at least at the beginning, trying to copy the Parthenon. All grand art calls back upon its predecessors, frequently going back to, in the most common memory the Greeks. And so it is with this building, but instead of being so old that it is barely still standing, we have a few modifications. A revitalization, if you will.

The main lobby inside of Education Building.

Colorful art, reminiscent of a child's drawing, adorns the walls inside. Wood paneling and concrete construction along with some... peculiar interior decoration choices lead to the place feeling like it was modeled after the ISIS office in Archer.

Garden side of Education Building

Heading back outside, we can see where the columns would go if this were a more true to form copy of the Parthenon. In the picture above, we get to walk amidst a beautiful garden as we admire(?) the building. A few benches line the "sea" of pebbles and exposed concrete that line around the temple itself.

The third floor roof terrace, accessible from the offices there.

The view of TBH from the Education Building roof.

Going back in, pestering one of the faculty, and navigating out to the roof, we get an entirely new side of the building. This isn't something you'd be able to walk around in Athens; we're on the roof. We can look around and see the buildings all around us. It's windy up here; the height above the trees means the wind doesn't get blocked off so much. It's really an exhilarating feeling to be on the roof of a building, that should definitely be attempted and done as frequently as possible.

This is an unusual post for me, admittedly. I think, in a way, it reflects some of the unusuality of rerecognizing an old building as something you'd never seen before. Or, more generally, seeing something in a new way for the first time. You get to rediscover something you thought you already knew, and it's fascinating to realize why things you thought were weird or bad are the way they are. Interesting, at the very least. And an interesting way to get some knowledge of a design I have only limited knowledge of on my own.