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Sunday, November 14, 2010

Beautiful Stair Reinforces My Architectural Optimism

The Shepherd Center parking deck reinforces my architectural optimism, more on that in a minute.


Did the architects know how beautiful this would be? You can only see this from Bennett Street in the evening.
P1050106-2010-11-12-Matre-Piedmont-Hospital-Parking-Stair-Horizontal-Wide

A quick glance south from Bennett shows a substation, railroad, then parking lots. Ugh. But wait a minute, this is beautiful.
P1050110-2010-11-12-Matre-Piedmont-Hospital-Parking-Stair-Vertical

An architectural optimist believes that we can have beauty without $billions; that the modest and the practical can delight and inspire, that the mundane can be art.
P1050104-2010-11-12-Matre-Piedmont-Hospital-Parking-Stair-Horiz

Here the requirements for stairs, lighting, ventilation, safety, paint, make something special for the few folks that happen to look.
P1050104-2010-11-12-Matre-Piedmont-Hospital-Parking-Stair-Horiz-BW

I hope that it didn't take one extra dime to make it beautiful. Did the architects know? I'll bet they did.
P1050104-2010-11-12-Matre-Piedmont-Hospital-Parking-Stair-Horiz-detail

3 comments:

  1. Terry you are so right, why can't the elements of even a parking garage be beautiful, as these stairs are!!

    xoxo
    Karena

    Art by Karena

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good post

    http://kathleenjackson.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete