Institutional #3 (Double Doors)

[croneitude]

I've worked in the same building for fifteen years, and it is one that is quite often called the ugliest on campus.  Over my time there, however, I've learned to find the beauty in the ugly.  Sometimes I tell people it is easy to do if they just embrace the mid-century modern aesthetic.  But for me, it is in the small details:  the light illuminating a hallway, the ill-fitting double doors I've walked through countless times on the way to the soda machine, the way that one hallway meets another meets another.  People get lost in this building often, and even after fifteen years there are parts that remain a mystery to me.

I'm told that this building will be gone within the next five years, and as much as I look forward to one that is more functional in general, I will miss these spaces, even in all of their empty despair.  Until then, I'll be documenting the beauty where I find it in my daily existence.

Comments

[zyzyly.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you'll be documenting its last days. I love old buildings. One of the hospitals I teach at is going to close at the end of the year when the new one is finished. I'll be glad to be in a new hospital, but I will miss things like the wonderful light in the stairwells of the old. I am planning to ask the powers that be if I can photograph it after all the patients are gone.

[croneitude.livejournal.com]

I probably should have said "old" in quotes. There are certainly older buildings on campus. This one was I believe late 50's or so, and is rumored to have been modeled after a rat maze. It really doesn't have the charm of truly older buildings, and it is very necessary to look carefully to find the beauty.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Hey, I work in one of the ugliest buildings on my campus too! We could form a club. Schmitz Hall, however, was built during the concrete Brutalist '70s and isn't going away anytime soon.