East Wing of the National Gallery of Art

After hearing in class that I must visit this building if ever in Washington, DC, I visited it on my fall break trip to the area. It was totally worth the horrible traffic, crazy drivers, confusing roads, and strange tunnel we went through to get there. These photos do not do it justice, especially because most of my photos are of small portions. I did not attempt to take one that showed wide angles of the building.

It was very interesting to visit this structure after having just finished a project dealing with space. On both the interior and the exterior, space seems to be played with extensively. Though collectively the entire building is a space, and the rooms in them are spaces, there seems to exist many less obvious "places" in this building.

Oh, and it has the largest elevator I have seen in my entire life. I really regret not taking a photo of the inside of it when I was riding it. I think it is so large because it is used to transport artwork to the various levels of the building. It was amazing. It was larger than my bedroom.

Just in case anyone doubts I was really there, haha...



I really loved this giant mobile that was hanging down into the middle. One great feature of this building is the great open space in the middle that transcends all of the levels of the building.





I really appreciated this little detail: the way the stone is carved out here and curves with the escalator is great. It may seem like a strange thing to choose to talk about, but I think that it shows how important it is to respond to what you have to use. It was a good idea to have an escalator there, so instead of just plopping an escalator there (not that escalators can really be plopped), the wall was made to respond to it, and therefore the escalator becomes more integral in the building.