Oh, what curves! - A Picture A Day # 22

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this in the blog before but, when I was a kid I wanted to be an architect when I grew up. Weird, huh? I had a neighbor who was an architect and I knew he had designed his own house (of a 'modern' style, for the time), and I thought that was cool. But what does a little kid know about being an architect?

Because my family runs a used book store we always had a small but interesting library at home. I remember spending a lot of time just flipping through books.

We had a decent encyclopedia set, books from some of those TIME/LIFE sets, and so many coffee table and kids' books about other places, animals, space exploration, and you name it, that I'll never remember them all. The point is, sure I loved dinosaurs as much as any other child but I was endlessly intrigued by man-made things.

My fascination with building and design is what spurred hours of play with Lego sets and, perhaps more important, designing and re-designing what, to me, were the ultimate Hot Wheels tracks.

Hot Wheels should be required play for small children. Not just the cars, but the building of tracks. You can't just string together anything you can imagine. Hot Wheels track design requires a kid to obey the most basic laws of everyday physics and learn how to command them, and this includes an introduction to algebraic concepts. If this track is X pieces long and begins at height Y (the back of a dining room chair?) the loop/jump/curve must be positioned at Z for the car to successfully transit the obstacle. Oh no! We then learn that the weight and speed of the car will cause the track to slip if not properly supported... and the exercises in design, engineering, and physical theories begin anew with every fresh track design.

So, the point is, I like design, architecture, and engineering. And curvy stuff always catches my eye (wink wink). So, this is the first building I encountered at the Cleveland Clinic and I was pleasantly surprised to find an architectural model of the whole campus inside the main building, then lucky to have an opportunity to photograph the building in daylight and again at dusk.

By the way, if you haven't noticed, you can click the images to see larger versions of almost all of them.

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Oh, what curves!