Philip Johnson's Chapel of St. Basil

I was visiting my friend J for his graduation from Rice University with a Master of Architecture degree. It was only fitting that we toured around Houston looking at the more notable buildings. We stopped by Philip Johnson's Chapel of St. Basil at the University of St. Thomas. We only had a few minutes until his family arrived in town. We resolved to return later that night, which we did.

In the evening, the chapel is lit by three major floodlights, and much to our joy, we discovered we could create two-story high shadow puppetry with an impressive umbra and penumbra. It started out with walking like an Egyptian and acting like a zombie, arms outstretched in front of the lights. But then I decided to turn it up a notch:



I had J take photos both with my actual self in the image for scale, and just the shadow itself:



Within moments, two security guards in a golf cart came hurtling towards us. J and I exchanged a glance. Clearly, the party was about to be over and we were going to be escorted from the campus.

They pulled up next to us and stopped. One of the men said, "Wow. I've been here for years, and that's the first time I've ever seen that pose." So J said, "People never do this?" And the guard said, "Not like that!" They laughed approvingly and sped off.

I sexualized myself on the side of a church and got instantaneous results. I think there's a lesson in there somewhere.

Not my terminal

I spent a half-hour blogging from my iPhone and the post never made it online, but the photo did. I added some other pictures. This is the rewrite:

The weekend of the 17th, I took a trip to DC flying out of LaGuardia. When I got to the Delta terminal, I was informed that because I was booked on a Delta *Shuttle*, I was in the entirely wrong place. Of course, nowhere on my ticket or in any of my pre-boarding materials did it mention that I was on a shuttle or that I had to go to some other terminal entirely. Thanks for the heads-up, Delta! The guy at the ticket counter informed me that I had to go downstairs, outside, and take Bus A to the Shuttles. Uh, OK. Thankfully the airport wasn’t too congested and I had arrived with 60 minutes to spare. I made my way downstairs (again, thanks for the lack of signage!), found where I needed to be, and waited for Bus A.

Once I got on Bus A, I wondered where the heck we were going. We passed every other airline terminal I could think of…American, United, US Airways…and then drove through green pastures. Perhaps they were taking us out to the fields to kill us?

Just as I was going from annoyed to supremely annoyed, they dropped us off in front of this small art deco terminal with a frieze of flying fish. My dismay turned to joy: an unexpected architectural gem! And it was in seriously good shape! And it was OPEN! I went inside and glimpsed a small rotunda with murals and nice art deco doors with steelwork reminiscent of airplane wings. A sign for "restaurant" was off to the left and a sign for "gates" was directly ahead. Beautiful!

But, it was pretty much deserted. Clearly, this wasn't it. Dammit! (After doing some web searching, I discovered that this is the Marine Air Terminal, the last remaining active airport terminal from the days of the "flying boat" in the 1930s and 40s.)

I went back outside and saw a slapdash, makeshift short white box of a temporary pile of terminal poo. Great, that was my craptacular destination. I went inside, did the security bit and sat in this minimalist-due-to-cheapness drab interior. Barf:

And please explain those bizarre magazine racks of free reading materials. It's like someone deliberately set out to make as sterile an environment they could muster, but figured if they could toss in some free toilet reading, all would be forgiven.

I'm grateful that I glimpsed the Marine Terminal and found something I want to research further. However, I'm sad that most travel nowadays is full of armed soldiers and nondescript architecture that provides no aesthetic pleasure. Airports and train stations are portals to our destinations, but why has culture devolved to the point that we can't make these temporary spaces as much a part of a positive experience as where we hope to arrive? I'm sure the sheer volume of people traveling now versus in 1930 is the issue, as well as economics. But still--there has to be a better compromise.

If I were applying to architecture school, this is exactly what I would write about in my application essay. Since I have no intention of going back to school, I simply sat in the nearly windowless space, nostalgic for a time I wasn't a part of and yet also grateful that I caught that tiny glimpse into the past.