The Ismaili Center in Toronto, Canada is a mosque designed by Charles Correa’s architecture firm and finished in 2014, only one year before the architect’s death. The prayer hall has a large glass roof, which, wen illuminated from the inside at night, is stunning. In the above picture the mosque is reflected in a nearby black tile reflecting pool, producing a striking visage.

The inside of the prayer hall is similarly beautiful, with the sky visible from anywhere inside. I’m sure the glass ceiling is amazing at sunset or during the rain, and I wonder what it would sound like during a thunderstorm. I’m guessing it doesn’t hail much in Toronto, because I don’t think a building like this would make it very many years in Oklahoma weather. I very much like how the supports for the glass roof are visible, and I am very interested in the engineering involved in getting the roof to stand on its own. Sometimes great engineering is a thing of beauty, and this mosque is no exception.

The Champalimaud Foundation is a private biomedical research foundation located in Lisbon, Portugal, and its headquarters were designed by Charles Correa and was finished in 2010, only five years before his death. The campus sits along the sea, just at the entrance of the Tagus River. Its largest building has a very interesting teardrop shape, and the amphitheater close to the ocean is particularly striking. Some of the buildings even have trees atop them, and several trees are planted atop and inside the buildings, visible through the circular openings in the teardrop building. Correa’s use of vegetation is very interesting, and I am sure the scientists and personnel at the foundation are pleased to see trees just outside their laboratory windows.

This tunnel connecting two buildings stands out to me as well. From the angle of the picture, the small pond at the back of the frame blends in with the ocean in an effect similar to that of an infinity pool. The curved outside of the building also creates a horizon-like effect, making it hard to grasp the exact perspective. If I worked in such a building, I would probably cross the tunnel as often as possible, as it isn’t very common to be able to get that close a view of the ocean at work.

Another work by Charles Correa designed in 1986 and built in 1992, Jawahar Kala Kendra is a fine arts center and museum located in Jaipur. Its purpose its to preserve arts and crafts from the Indian state of Rajasthan, and it is separated into several blocks. I find the central amphitheater to be pleasing, though, with its tiered geometric designs around the side and simple circle and square marking its center. Much like another of his buildings, the British Council in New Delhi, the grass stands out very distinctly against the red brick color of the courtyard, and makes it much more pleasing to the eye.

The ceiling of the entrance foyer stands out as well. Of course, Correa may not have designed the painting covering it, but he certainly took part in designing the dome on which the painting sits, which has a port on the center topped with glass, allowing sunlight into the first room of the Center. The dome without a center is structurally interesting to me, and I wonder how it is supported, although there is probably glass in the whole to prevent rain coming in.

Built in 1992 and designed by the eminent Indian architect Charles Correa, the British Council Building in New Delhi stands out among the surrounding mid-rise buildings. Its basic shape seems almost brutalist, just a concrete rectangle with sharp corners and little decoration, but, looked at from the front, it seems hardly out of place. The green grass and trees complement the sandy-colored building and courtyard, and and the tiered white levels behind the front face of the building add interesting depth.

I am fascinated by the mural on the front, and I wonder what its artist intended for it to represent, if anything. It almost seems like a hydra glaring out from behind the brick facade, possibly a nod to the Indian perception of the old British Empire, like a multi-headed hydra on which the sun never set. Monster analogies aside, the way that the building divides itself into three parts is pleasing to the eye, which is drawn down the center corridor, past the door, and up, to the mural and sky.

In my senior year of high school, I had an internship with an architecture firm, called Guernsey, and myself and two of my friends followed an architect around for a couple of weeks. At the time, the firm was partner to the renovations of the state capitol, and they brought us to the building to show us the renovations.

This was Spring 2017. They were working on the north face of the building, which was completely covered in scaffolding and blue tarp, which was to keep wind from blowing on the stone that they were treating with chemicals. We put on hard hats, gloves, respirators, face masks, the whole nine yards. Apparently they were using some kind of material that was a nasty skin irritant, so we had to cover up completely. We climbed the entire height of the building in the covered scaffolding, which was well over 100 degrees inside with the sun beating on the tarp. At the top, I remember taking off the mask and feeling the wind on my face was heaven.

There were Swedish stonemasons working renovating the gargoyles atop the capitol. I was able to meet their leader, Bjorn, who was working on a gryphon on one of the corners of the building. He didn’t speak English, but he greeted me with a hearty handshake and said, simply, “Bjorn.” None of the other stonemasons spoke English either.

As a result of this experience, I know all kinds of interesting trivia about the state capitol that most people probably don’t know. For example, the original plans for the building hadn’t been updated – at all – since the building’s completion in 1917. As you can imagine, the building has been heavily modified since then, and the architects working on the renovations were surprised to find, in several places, floors, or lack thereof, where otherwise indicated by the plans (of which I was able to see the originals).

I was also able to see the tunnels, which lead beneath the capitol and across the street. I imagine that they were designed as an easy form of entry or egress for workers and officials that didn’t want to cross the streets surrounding the building. The problem, though, was that they were flooded, and had been for several years. The engineers couldn’t figure out exactly where the water was coming from, and, when I left the internship, they were planning on filling and sealing them. I’m not sure if they ever went through with it, though.

It was a hell of a couple of days. If I ever see Bjorn again, I’m going to buy him a drink.

I want to say that they finished building Devon Tower when I was about 14, but it was started a couple of years earlier. At that time, I don’t think I’d left OKC, so it was by far the tallest building I had ever seen. Of course, I understood that there were taller buildings in other cities, but it is hard, standing there, looking up at the tower rising out of the city, dwarfing the buildings around it, and say that it isn’t impressive. Especially when standing right beneath it, looking up, it seems to go on forever.

One of my friends likes to call Devon Energy Center ‘The Citadel,’ which I find particularly apt, because it dominates the city in a way that I really haven’t seen recreated, whether through images or in person, anywhere else. Another friend says it looks like an finger, in which the sloped part at the top is the nail. It seems as though everyone that lives in and around OKC has some special name or story for the tower, and it seems to be quite polarizing, insofar as a building is able. Perhaps the fact that Devon Energy Center redefined the skyline of OKC nets it a special place, whether out of love or hate, in Oklahoman’s hearts.

The pictures above are of the house that I am currently living in, and I’m not sure if it is easy to tell from the satellite image, but I live in a hexagon. The roof belies the actual shape of the house, which, I promise, is a perfect hexagon. I am renting the house with three other roommates right now for $2000 a month (split four ways), and my landlord, who is a very nice old lady, tells me that the house was designed and built by OU’s dean of architecture in the late 50’s and early 60’s. I have no way of corroborating that information, but it sounds pretty neat, so I included it.

The house has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and no hallways. The no hallways part sounds kind of weird, but you walk in the door and it’s true; there are just doorways connecting all of the rooms. The kitchen lies at the center of the house and is a smaller, nested hexagon with a taller roof segment letting in light and six doors leading out of it. It’s pretty easy to get turned around and forget where you are if you don’t keep track of all of the doors.

As a consequence of living in a hexagon, the angles in my room are very strange. I share a bathroom with another roommate, but, closet and bathroom excluded, my room is shaped like a trapezoid, so you can probably picture the angles. It’s a really cool place, and I highly doubt that whatever rental I move to next will stand up to it.

I won’t miss the electricals, though; the lights flicker when the fridge kicks on.

I doubt that I really noticed the Physical Sciences Center the first time I stepped foot inside it as I was probably hurrying to my next class on the first day of Freshman year. I think my disdain for the building has developed as a slow burn, but after four years I have come to really hate it. Not only does it have its own brand of brutalism that stands out against the rest of OU’s architecture, but, even if it was on its own, it really does belong on r/evilbuildings. I’ve probably had about half of my classes at the Physical Sciences Center, and, every time, I look up at the cornerless citadel and wonder what the person that designed it was really thinking, and why such wholesome studies as chemistry and mathematics would be sullied by such an ugly buliding.

For a lot of people, the Physical Sciences Center probably represents general chemistry, calculus, or some other required class that they disliked. For those people, it is probably a fitting visage, but I have had a lot of my favorite classes there, and I think it’s a shame that they had to take place in a building that would be genuinely at home at a prison.