Class & National Geographic

As I believe I spoke about last time I recently started as a volunteer at Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House in Hyde Park (just a block away from the Seminary Co-op where I work). The first step as a volunteer is to receive training regarding both Frank Lloyd Wright and the Robie House. It is truly amazing the number of works he produced in his lifetime, with some architectural features that are absolutely astounding to me. For example the windows in the Robie House are separated from each other by wooden panels at the corners of the buildings, Frank Lloyd Wright later grew to have horizontal panels at the corners of several of his buildings or no wooden paneling at all, leaving the corners almost completely invisible and practically nothing separating the nature outside from inside. In some of his buildings you can even dismantle the glass at these corners leaving literally nothing separating the inside from out. How grand to have a house like that! I can only hope maybe some day. Another interesting feature is the fact that Rafael Viñoly, the architect of the Booth School of Business that is right across the street from the Robie House, took several elements of the house into account when designing his building. From the cantilever to the main floor being the second floor, to the planters that surround the floor and even the ribbon windows they both now share these qualities like brothers standing across from each other.

National Geographic always astonishes me. The photographs are always beautiful and there is always some tidbit of information that I've never known. I am only on page 26 of 142 of this month's edition and I have already learned two things. First of all helium apparently is a rapidly deteriorating resource. According to the article at this rate we should be charged $100 for one helium balloon instead of 75 cents. I never thought about helium as a deteriorating resource and with this article's help I'm sure I'm not the only one that will think twice when buying my next helium balloon. Secondly I learned about the fascinating step wells of India with their Escher-esque look to them. Yet another thing the Brits messed up on when colonizing this country as they took the wells to be unsanitary and let them fall into disuse. Now that I think of it I remember sitting towards the bottom of one of these wells in Banaras once. It did not have the Escher-esque look to the stairs going down to it as only one flight of stairs went down each of its sides (I'm finding it difficult to remember if the stairs went down every side or only a few sides). It was truly something to me to sit down there and stare at the water. They were performing some kind of ceremony at the water's edge ... maybe trying to clense someone of their sins? I'm again not remembering everything about the situation but I do remember feeling so peaceful there as a little escape from the world outside. How wonderful it would be to have that be included in the city's water system. What an architectural delight and how ingenious! Here is one with Escher-like steps: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGB0_F5BdkYVXcyykVmr7Iujpbhrff-wj-uuem57_q5bySW5B1s7umhzhxVm2JQr0QJA6G_pF-Tiyg_me-nyLIRTMY-Wqz2n3XTgiZLtpGuiiAJAFi-wSVgIwL1VmSA2wVWqQslWIv2s0/s1600/Deepest-Step-Well-15.jpg