On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Ken Follett wrote:

> And here I've been fixating my architectural/symbol wonderment on the shapes
> of amoebas, or snails mating, and amorphous extragalactical blobs.

My userid and sometime nickname, Polygon, is a reference to regular
polygons in tile work and the shapes of Orson S. Fowler inspired houses.

> On another note: BBB (Rev. Rhodes' outfit) designed the NY State Thruway
> service centers of tile, glass, stone, steel and timber and for some
> inexplicable reason, despite the Burger Kings within, I love stopping at all
> of them -- usually to use the urinal, as this morning on the way up to
> Westchester, and quite often these short visits are one of the more pleasant
> interludes in an otherwise radio/head-bounded road trip. At the risk of
> sharing my bias, I think that a building that makes us feel like we want to
> get off the road and out of the car and sort-of intimately and bodily
> interact with it is much finer of an architectural accomplishment than one
> that makes us only want to think about and argue over the merits of it's
> design.

I miss the cruddy half-century-old Thruway service centers.  Indeed,
sensing that they were not long for this world, I startled my wife a few
years back by taking a bunch of exterior photos of one of them, near
Auburn.

However, I very much concur in your positive view of the replacements.
Having traveled the Albany-to-Buffalo section of the Thruway in a
midwinter snowstorm with a restless 2-year-old, stopping at probably every
service center en route, I came to appreciate them.

Old-time railroad terminals were designed with lavih large spaces and high
ceilings in recognition of the claustrophobia induced by long trips in
enclosed cars; the new Thruway service centers revive this awareness,
something especially noticeable when the space outside is completely
packed with fast-moving snowflakes.

                                   Larry

---
Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
Washtenaw County Commissioner, 4th District
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com
Mailing address: P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106