This picture is of my dad’s shop building that we built together when I was a senior in high school. My dad always wanted his own place that he could work on cars or other various projects. He finally got a chance to make this dream a reality in 2016. My dad also wanted to build it by himself from the ground up so we went to work on it. It took many months and a lot of hard work but we were able to successfully construct it with help from family and friends.

This building is meaningful to me because it signifies so much time that we got to spend together before I went off to college. One of my favorite memories from building this building is when I skipped school to help my dad pour the concrete slab. That was a long day but I got to learn a lot from him. We still look back on that day and wonder why in the world I would skip school to pour concrete all day. Although there were times I hated this building during the construction, I am so grateful I got to do that now. It was a lot of hard work but it was totally worth it in the end.

The Texas State Capitol building is the largest capitol building of any state in the United States. This changed briefly when Louisiana made a building just a couple of feet taller.  Texas’s response to this was to add a statue on top of the building to take the crown back. Besides the battle for the biggest, this building is truly enormous, having an underground office space to maximize space in the most efficient way possible. When you are around this building you feel like you are at the capitol of the world. The lawn is enormous and open to the public almost as a park, filled with enormous trees and beautiful nature.

Growing up I always played baseball competitively during the summer and there was one place that I always remembered playing at it was called big league dreams.  It was a building that had 8 fields all turf and modeled after old and current big league stadiums.  With 2 big inside concession stands with inside viewing of all the fields.  The fields and concession stands always made me excited to play.  I remember our coach hitting balls just barely hitting the ball over the fence so we can try to rob a home run just like the major leaguers.  The fields always were well put together and because of the turf they were always able to play on them.  The concession stands were one big area in between 4 fields with glass on all 4 sides so you could watch the game.  But inside it was very similar to a Dave and Busters in which they have games and a bar.  Then they had a giant park in the middle of the complex as well.  Everyone from the parents to the players always had a good time going to the games and spending the day there.  Every time my team played there we always had the bests of times there and is where I had some of my best baseball memories from pitching a no hitter to hitting a walk off home run.  Big League Dreams will always have a special place in my heart and will always be one of my favorite places that I have ever played baseball at.

The White house was an interesting building. I was initially excited to enter the home of the president of the United states, but we were only able to walk through less than a quarter of the residence, for security reasons. From the outside it is beautiful, if you ignore all the security and tourists surrounding it. The inside was kind of funky because with each new president, new additions would be added while only some of the older ones would be removed, making it a mish mash of different styles. The building seems like an impenetrable fortress, but I found there to be an ample amount of natural light. The building was originally inspired by the Leinster house in Ireland. The original idea of the building was for it to be the nations home, somewhere that you could just walk up to and have a conversation with the president. But with time more measures were added to close it off. Overall, it was probably the least impressive building I visited in DC.

In my prior blogs, I discussed places which were formative for me principally through either education or competition, though admittedly my interpersonal experiences are what really make those places stand out in my memory. Here, I will bring forth a building which is material to me for different reasons, and whose place in my personal architectural canon cannot go without mention.

Super Cao Nguyen is easily the largest exotic marketplace in Oklahoma City, and likely the largest business in the city’s Asian District. Architecturally, the building is memorable, though not especially distinct- at the end of the day, it mostly resembles any given supermarket. Some exceptions might be its prominent vestibule, with large, intricate windows, unique bollards emblazoned with (what I believe are) Chinese characters, and pastel-green pillars with an identity obviously derived from traditions of the orient. What distinguishes the building from others at a level of design pertains more to the human element; it is not the support structures or material choices which strike one when entering the space. Rather, the authentically messy and irregular arrangement of the space and products inside, the long, long aisles with shelves stocked full of products which likely cannot be found anywhere else in the country- or at least in this part of the country-, each shelf topped with large furniture pieces or boxes of product precariously stacked atop one another. The way the space feels like it is run by and patronized by real people, rather than algorithms and market research teams, that is what stands out about it. A beautiful, comforting chaos.

My personal experience of the place, while certainly extensive with regards to the store itself, stems more from a restaurant contained within Super Cao’s ancillary space, visible in the above photograph to the far right with the high windows. In that tall space, always illuminated primarily, if not exclusively, by the light from those windows, the store keeps many of its statues and large exotic plants. And if one finds the staircase to the right and ascends it, they will exit onto a platform overlooking the space, from which they can reach Cafe Oasis. It is this strange little space which I associate most with this building. Located walking distance from my high school, my friends and had countless sojourns here, wherein we would discuss the trials and tribulations of the last phase of compulsory education, laugh over whatever silliness had transpired in our lives or on the internet recently, and sometimes ponder on the future, the big questions of life, and, frankly, do everything in our power to forestall going home. Cafe Oasis and Super Cao Nguyen do not speak to my own personal development so far, nor do they furnish me with opportunities to build the future. Much like my high school, they are the past. But they are a past I can return to anytime I want some Singapore noodles and boba tea.

The Jeffrey Mansion in Columbus Ohio is a beautiful building, that was donated to the city after the original owner Killed himself in the clocktower of the building, leaving behind a note that stated he will sell the building to the city for $1. I encountered it when I used to live in Ohio for my sister’s sorority event. My thoughts on the building were that it was really designed well and I loved the design. Though it does give an eerie feeling that it could be haunted by Mr. Jeffrey himself.

The second place I would like to talk about is this marvelous tower as a stand-in to an old iconic landmark. The Freedom Tower was built years after the incident of 9/11 as a representation about how our country can come back from a dark time. I felt a sense of pride and awe for the first time laying eyes on this marvelous structure. I also felt ripped off as it was 50 dollars to take the elevator to the top. The first picture was the first time I saw the structure for the first time in full, the second one shows the 50 dollar view with the Chrysler building in view.