Inside Out

Yesterday, I was in the Smith building, which is the business school at the University of Maryland. Business schools, for some reason, always get lavished upon. From the outside, this building is not much to look at. Even from the inside, it's perhaps no different from a dozen other buildings I've seen. But, compare it to any other campus building, and it's far nicer.

Basically, the building inverts inside and outside.

Let me explain.

Most people say that the idea rooms in a building are those with a window. However, if a building is not expected to be very thin, there's bound to be rooms with no windows to the outside world.

However, someone came up with the following brilliant idea. Have the windows face inwards. That's right, inwards.

You might complain "but won't they merely see the inside of the building"? And sure you enough, you do. But most buildings of this kind have a central region where you can see all the way up, four to five floors up. Thus, when you look out, you see this area which, in the past, would be a tiny courtyard lit by sunlight.

And in such buildings, sunlight can still hit this area, but through windows, instead.

And this view is actually not that bad.

Think about it. When you have windows that face outside, what do you see? Parking lots? Cars? Roads? It's all manmade and ugly.

But take that to the extreme, have the windows point to the interior architecture, and instead of ugly parking lots, you have reasonably beautiful interior architecture.

If only all buildings on the campus were so nice. Instead, you have the architecture of the 60s and 70s which were more utilitarian than beautiful. And, fair being fair, this isn't terribly original. Once someone has a good idea, it gets copied over and over and over again. But, at least, it's one way to deal with lack of windows.

The idea seems to have sprouted sometime during the 90s, perhaps even into the new millenium. You see it in all recent academic buildings in the last ten years.

Let's see what the next ten years brings.