Day one

I will have been living in the city of Baltimore for one year come the end of may, 2009. Although there are many interesting things to do and see here, I have become increasingly interested in the stories and significance of the buildings I pass each day.

I wanted to create this blog in order to motivate myself to uncover the details about the interesting places I pass each day and at the same time make these discoveries available to anyone who cares to know.

As my profile bio says, I hope that by learning about the design decisions, history and movements that have shaped my favorite structures, I will be able to appreciate them even more.


Although I have always been interested in cities, buildings and urban planning, I am embarrassed to say that I feel I don't know nearly enough about the topic for my satisfaction.

Sim City taught me to keep the yellow zones away from the green; but when it comes to differentiating beaux-arts and baroque, I feel I have insufficient funds.

I have recently begun reading The Look of Architecture, a very small, fun, accessible set of lectures delivered by Witold Rybczynski, professor of urbanism at Penn and writer for Slate.

One opinion he mentioned that caught my attention was the assertion of the absolute necessity of physically experiencing a building (as opposed to photographically experiencing it) when trying to form an opinion of a designers work.

It is a sad fact that although I am familiar with the names like Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, Le Corbusier, I.M. Pei, Frank Lloyd Wright, to my knowledge I have never been inside one of their buildings.

The results of quick internet research reveal that Baltimore is in fact home to 2 structures by van der Rohe (an office tower and an apartment building a short walk from my home) and 1 tower by I.M Pei--and thus I begin a slow exploration. Hopefully I'll be able to visit these three buildings soon--and why? to see what I think.

In the mean time, I will be adding links to the left which I find helpful or interesting.

-G