The Palais à Versailles is the most beautiful man-made place I have ever been to. Every part of the building is art, there is never too little light, which I would guess stems from the lack of artificial light at the time of construction.  Louis kinda gave them just a blank cheque to create something beautiful. Looking back at the palace from the gardens you get the full sense of how much labour went into the construction and upkeep for centuries. The scale is hard to grasp even when you are there.  There are thousands of people there and it’s very crowded, but the space never feels small or claustrophobic. I had been in a fair number of opulent churches and royal things at that point but nothing came close, and still hasn’t.

Walker tower was where I lived during my freshman year of college.  It is a terrible looking building. There is little to no natural light throughout most of the building, which combines with the white concrete walls to give off a very cave-like appearance.  The small rooms with single slit windows were also very reminiscent of a prison structure. This was not lessened by the way the entire building is split into discrete sections that require credentials.  It results in you feeling very closed off in the building.

The omniplex, or as is now called “the Oklahoma science museum” was one of the most impactful buildings in my childhood.  The red geodesic dome was so iconic, there was no other building that had anything close to something like that. The rest of the building was so deceptively large as well.  The exterior of the building was ugly concrete but it was covered in ivy so it was hard to tell. They really used the inside well, they maintained the feeling of huge open areas but they were still defined enclosed sections.  I was always so excited to see that red dome every time I went there. For me it meant a very fun day walking around the museum. I rarely ever even saw the inside of its most defining characteristic, the dome. This was because it’s used for the IMAX screenings and I was always more interested in what was actually in the museum than what they were showing.

Notre Dame is a building that I don’t get to have constant, prolonged contact with but nonetheless has had a significant impact on my life.  I first visited Notre Dame the summer after my freshman year of college. I am not a Catholic but I think that to really get the full impact of anything you have to immerse yourself in it.  So I went to Sunday Mass at Notre Dame the first week that I was there. It was an amazing experience that I have never had anything else come close to. After that I stopped by almost every day, which wasn’t really out of my way because I usually had to walk past it anyway on my way to most places.  When you walk in it’s like being transported somewhere else, the inside is huge and almost all the light is filtered through the gorgeous stained glass windows and the sound of the ceremony is very powerful no matter where you are in the building.