Come Look With Me

How often do you look at buildings? I mean REALLY look at buildings. Last Thursday I exited the subway into Copley Square and started my independent architectural tour of Boston. By the end of the afternoon I was amazed at how little I had actually engaged with buildings, looked at their materials, their details, looking at the built landscape. You don't often look at a building since you are often sidled up right next to it on the sidewalk. To really look, you have to cross the street and look back... it is a whole other way of seeing.

Now that I have much more free time since quitting the architecture program at the GSD, I decided to buy an AIA (American Institute of Architects) guide to Boston and pick out a smattering of buildings to go observe. With architecture, so much cannot be observed: floorplans, cross-sections, preparatory sketches, uninterrupted facades and the interior spaces. The architecture observed to the common man, is the facade and it leaves much of the complexities and beauties of architecture undiscovered.

So below are a few images from Back Bay, and in the days to follow there will be more images from other parts of Boston...