Tonight was the UMMB's annual banquet recognizing the end of the season and celebrating the achievements of the band and the individual members. We all get dressed up, eat delicious food, and watch a great slideshow of the season. Sounds like a relaxing evening, right? Wrong.
The banquet was held at The Depot, which is an upscale hotel complex with an indoor ice skating rink. The reason it's called The Depot is because it is a renovated train station. The ice skating rink, which they covered in boards and was where the banquet was held, was in the old train shed. So of course, with my current project on train stations, my architortured mind spend tonight torturing me. I examined every truss, noting that the shed was not a vaulted structure, but a simple triangular trussed shed. It was not very wide, probably only fitting 2 or 3 trains and platforms. A good chunk of the night was spent trying to find a reason for the very large pipes coming straight down into the center of the space with a funnel-like structure on the bottom. Probably for the ventilation of train smoke, but with a shed this narrow, if the edges were open, which I'm guessing they were, there shouldn't be need for a large vent system like that.
This is what I thought about through the awards ceremony and dinner. I really don't think you need any more evidence that architecture has forever ruined my peace-of-mind. Not that I mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment