Frank Gehry designed the headquarters for social media company Facebook located in Menlo Park, California. The building features large glass windows and an open floor plan with many desks. The interior features modern art by famous artists like Shantell Martin. I had the opportunity to work in this building this summer when I interned at Facebook as a product designer. It made me feel excited going to work in the morning going to a building like this!

This is one of the most creative buildings I have ever seen in my life. It is called the Dancing House and it is located in Prague. It’s a national tourist site that people travel to see every year. The architecture style is deconstructionist because of the unusual shape. It’s called the dancing house because of the left tower that appears to be dancing away from the building. The architecture on this “house” is beautiful and I would love to travel to see it some day!

This is the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California by Frank Gehry. After looking through Gehry’s architecture, I noticed that a lot of his buildings are related to art or creativity. I think this is fitting because of how creative the buildings themselves are. The angles in this building are really intriguing to me. Gehry didn’t hesitate from embracing the reflectivity of the material and faced the building towards the sun. The angles don’t make it too bright to bystanders, but create a beautiful reflection off of the building.

This is the Guggenheim museum by Frank Gehry in Bilbao, Spain. I like this building because it stands out from all the other buildings around it. It looks like a modern masterpiece among the other average Spanish buildings surrounding it. I think it’s the perfect building to represent a museum because the building looks like a piece in a museum itself. I really like all of Gehry’s architecture because he creates unique buildings that separate themselves from others. When you see a Gehry building, you know it.

I had the opportunity to intern at the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California for the past two years. I worked as a product designer building products for the Events and Ads teams alongside software engineers. For part of my time there, I worked in Facebook Building 20, which was designed by legendary architect Frank Gehry. The picture shown is the rooftop lounge that I would often work out of. This area was filled with greenery, a coffee shop, and an ice cream shop. It had a very open and welcoming feel because of all the familiar faces and the weather that this area provided. The inside was just as beautiful. The open workspace featured modern art, high ceilings, and microkitchens filled with snacks. The work area felt collaborative and open. I very much enjoyed my time working in this building! It fostered creativity and helped me come up with new product ideas for the company.

I got the chance to visit Italy around a year ago and experienced some of the most amazing architecture I’ve ever seen. I saw the Pantheon in Rome the first week I was in Italy. This was a building like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was like seeing pictures from history books in person. It was probably the oldest building I’ve ever seen, being built in 126 A.D. The inside of the building had a large circular opening for sun to shine in and illuminate the building. Since it was a place of worship, this beam of light seemed to be a metaphor for the Heavens shining in. Despite the many tourists in the building, there was still a warm, cozy feeling to it. It was like being transported to a completely different time period.

I got a chance to visit the Guggenheim on a visit to New York City a few months back. This building was designed by legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. When I first saw it, the building reminded me a lot of the BOK Center in Tulsa, just at a larger scale. The overlapping circular design was very modern and flashy. It stood out in Manhattan among an array of skyscrapers that looked the same. Stumbling upon the Guggenheim was like a breath of fresh air. If the building wasn’t beautiful enough, the art inside was amazing. This building did a great job of making me appreciate the art inside and the special place this building holds in the culture and history of New York City.

I spent this past summer living in San Francisco so I got to experience a different type of architecture living around there. The Palace of Fine Arts is one building in particular that stood out to me. The palace was designed by Bernard Maybeck, a well-known California architect. He designed the palace to resemble a Roman ruin, which he achieved by the detailed human art sketches and rounded dome. Standing in the middle of this palace and looking up felt amazing. The architect did a good job of making it feel open and welcoming, but also extravagant. The last time I visited I came here with friends at 2 AM and danced around with people inside the palace. It was definitely a very memorable experience.