For my final Carme blog, I am using the Caixa Forum, located in Zaragoza, Spain. Another truly remarkable building from Carme, this one continues her use of sharp edges and block structures to draw the eye, but what makes the Caixa Forum special to me is the way it is supported by a smaller building with two wings coming off of it. The building almost looks like its floating. The windows also fall in line with Carme’s signature style, as they are not a normal shape, but utilize sharp lines and interesting placements similar to the rest of her work. Before today I did not know who Carme Pinós was, but she is now one of my favorite architects. Her work blows my mind and is truly special to me.

I could not find an official name for this building, but everywhere I could find an image of it referred to it as a government building. Carme makes some pretty insane decisions with this building, but boy did they pay off. The extreme contrast of a simple black and white building in an urban setting is very satisfying to me. Carme continues her use of straight lines and interesting window placement with this building. The way Carme incorporated such sharp lines together to create buildings like this just blows my mind. Working in a Carme building would be a  joy every single day.

“Les Terres de l’Ebre” is an office building located in Tortosa, Spain. In this building, Carme utilizes futuristic smooth gray concrete slabs in a very creative way, using multiple slabs to hold one huge slab up which forms the roof. This building incorporates both sharp edges and smooth lines very well in a way not seen often. The building also has more than enough windows to meet my personal requirement, and I think this would be a very happy building to live or work in. I really appreciate the smooth look and the use of very few colors. This building is smooth and sleek, but enough to catch the eye and blow the mind away at the same time.

The Brown Hotel, located in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, has a long and interesting history and has left a distinct impact on the history of Louisville. The building itself is a 16 story hotel, which opened in 1923, and utilized an English Renaissance architectural style. While this building may not look like anything special from the outside, the inside is truly amazing.

The hotel is also known for its cultural impact due to the creation of the Hot Brown, a delicious sandwich consisting of two slices of baked bread, turkey, a large amount of cheese, bacon, tomatoes, greens, and a few other things that come together to make a wonderful sandwich. This building impacted my life due to the beautiful inside, solemn outside, and an amazing sandwich that I got to try there. The Brown Hotel is known across the country for its Hot Brown, and I am truly blessed to have been able to try it.

The Gaylord Memorial Stadium is perhaps the most recognizable work of architecture on the OU campus. With the first game played on the field in 1923, this field has been in use for almost a century now and has gone through multiple periods of renovation over time. This stadium seats over 80,000 people, and is a huge stadium. The atmosphere in this stadium during a game is absolutely electric, and there is nothing like OU football home games. This stadium gives OU fans a great deal of pride and truly is a work of art on the OU campus. The amount of fun, heartbreak, and happiness that has happened in this stadium is probably higher than anywhere else in the state, and this stadium has left its mark on tons of peoples lives.

The Devon Tower, formally known as the Devon Energy Center, is a 50 story skyscraper located in Oklahoma City. Finished in 2012, the Devon Tower marks the end of a transitionary in the downtown OKC area, in my opinion, changing from an area you had almost no reason to go to, to an area with many things to do, an NBA team, and a revitalized nightlife. This building may have a more simple design, but it is a true sign of growth in Oklahoma City and means a lot to me growing up here and watching the growth of my city with me. The interior of the Devon Tower is beautiful, and the top floor of the tower gives a view of OKC that otherwise is only able to be seen from a plane. The tower is lined with LEDs, allowing the color of it to be changed for any need. This building signifies years of growth in OKC, and means a lot to the people here.

This building resides in Northwest Oklahoma City and is a very interesting sight to see. Opening in 2012, the Patience S. Latting was the first metropolitan library to open in OKC in over 30 years, and the architect behind it made sure to make it stick out. The building walls are almost all glass, with small metal beams to support the frame, and more metal beams coming off of the roof for an outer layer of support. The structures on the top of the library are meant to resemble oil derricks, an iconic symbol of the state. I have spent many hours inside this building studying, and it truly is a great environment. Many people have spoken about ‘healthy buildings’ in their presentations, and this is one of them. The library was even built with strong sustainability features that allowed it to become the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified library in the state. This library is right around the corner from my house and from the moment it was built, the distinct design of it has always stood out to me.