CHAPTER EIGHT
Old Bones and New Bones
Even the beams and posts that hold a building together give it personality. This stone barn is at Lacock, a small English town (60). It may be five hundred years old. Its grizzled parts are like the bones of an old sea animal.
This framework holds the glass roof of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art (61). It is the visual opposite of the long, clear lines of the outside walls and reminds us that there is more to a building than first meets our eye. The East Building has a calm face, but there are places inside it, like this one, that spin with energy.
Fat columns have been part of this building for nine hundred years (62). We are looking at the great cathedral in the English city of Durham. It stands high above a river like a sturdy soldier. Bold Durham Cathedral is as much a fort as a church. Its stout frame—carved with rows of short lines—is as simple as its thick walls. There are no surprises at Durham as there are at the East Building, just a mighty form forever standing guard.
These arches are fans of white stone and red brick (63). The colors switch so quickly that the arches seem to roll. As you can see, this frame is very different from Durham’s (62). Supporting the Great Mosque at Córdoba, Spain, the arches—pinched like horseshoes—roll from left to right, turning the mosque into an upside-down sea. A walk through Durham is sober and quiet; a walk through the Great Mosque is a trip through a thousand explosions.