Large public interior

September 28, 2007 6:43 AM

What are some of the most beautiful, awe inspiring, large scale, public interior spaces you have ever seen or visited?

These can be entrances/lobbies to corporate buildings, libraries, the place you work, or whatever. I am just looking for inspiration in large beautiful interior public spaces.

posted by comatose to media & arts (71 comments total)

Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London is pretty impressive.
posted by mmascolino at 6:50 AM on September 28, 2007

Grand Central Station in New York City.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 6:53 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Do churches count as public spaces? if so most of the grand churches of Europe would count. I particularly liked Notre Dame de Paris, St. Peter's in Rome and Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos.
posted by mmascolino at 6:55 AM on September 28, 2007

British Museum
posted by roofus at 6:56 AM on September 28, 2007

The main terminal at Pudong Airport in Shanghai is enormous. I wasjetlagged and dazed, so I wasn't quite expecting it. Pretty impressive.
posted by jquinby at 6:57 AM on September 28, 2007

The Superior Dome (wikipedia link) at Northern Michigan University is the largest wooden dome in the world. My orientation tour guide said that it beat a Japanese dome by a cubic foot.

It's the only building I've been in that truly looks bigger on the inside than the outside. Walking in and looking up I actually got a sense of vertigo. The ceiling was so far away, but you had a sense of scale because of the exposed lumber.

Here's a bunch of flickr photos of the same.
posted by JeremiahBritt at 6:59 AM on September 28, 2007

The interior and the exterior of Temple de la Sagrada Família is probably one of the most incredible man made constructions that is still in progress today.
posted by bernsno at 7:06 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Along the same lines as JermiahBritt, the interior of the Superdome in New Orleans was vertigo inducing as well for me. It was just impressively large in every sense of the word.
posted by mmascolino at 7:06 AM on September 28, 2007

Guggenheim Bilbao
posted by thirteenkiller at 7:06 AM on September 28, 2007

The inside of 30th street station in Philadelphia is pretty neat. Not down by the Subway restaurant, but at the other end where you queue up to board the trains. Love it.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 7:10 AM on September 28, 2007

The Pantheon, OMG. And 2nd the Sagrada Familia. And, this is maybe a "me" thing, but the Hollywood Bowl...specifically, once I went to see the Singalong Sound of Music there and when Captain von Trapp was singing Edelweiss people got out lighters and cell phones and started waving them. The dark Hollywood Bowl filled with 16000 tiny lights was the most crazy big place I've ever been in.

Oh, and given that it's just an office, the main entrance to the Apple campus in Cupertino is pretty cavernous and huge.

Seriously though, the Pantheon.
posted by crinklebat at 7:11 AM on September 28, 2007

Chicago Cultural Center
posted by sulaine at 7:17 AM on September 28, 2007

Notre Dame
posted by forallmankind at 7:22 AM on September 28, 2007

Sultanahmet Mosque ("The Blue Mosque"), Istanbul.
posted by Pericles at 7:30 AM on September 28, 2007

theres a government building in the hague that just blows my mind - all glass and white girders
posted by dnc at 7:33 AM on September 28, 2007

The courtyard at the old Boston Public Library is really stunning. It's not particularly large but it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.
posted by sully75 at 7:45 AM on September 28, 2007

Flickr can be pretty good for this kind of thing. For example here are search results for "atrium" sorted by "interestingness".
posted by tomcooke at 7:46 AM on September 28, 2007

It may not be as big as some of the ones mentioned above, however, the lobby in the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone park is amazing. I could hardly believe my eyes when I first walked in. It is a hand built log cabin that as survived various natural disasters.

Here is an example, but it is hard to capture this lobby in a single picture.
posted by birdlips at 7:48 AM on September 28, 2007

The rotunda at San Francisco's City Hall.
posted by zachlipton at 7:48 AM on September 28, 2007

Another example of the Old Faithful Inn
posted by birdlips at 7:52 AM on September 28, 2007

Seconding St. Peter's Basilica, particularly because it was built almost 400 years ago. In DC, the National Building Museum is pretty cool.
posted by procrastination at 7:53 AM on September 28, 2007

The interior of Luxor in Las Vegas is pretty impressive.
posted by daveleck at 8:01 AM on September 28, 2007

The Cathedral in Siena, Italy
The Vehicle Assembly Building in Cape Canaveral, Florida
The Chambers of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC
The Rotunda of the Texas Capitol in Austin, Texas
posted by thewittyname at 8:06 AM on September 28, 2007

The interior of Kyoto station is amazing. From the main concourse to the (glass and metal) ceiling is 15 stories of empty. The west side has a stairway that goes forever and there are balconies where the opening in the wall is just insanely huge. It is by far my favorite place in Kyoto.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 8:07 AM on September 28, 2007

The Pantheon in Rome, absolutely. I felt I had wandered into an alien temple. Seeing the Christian alter and pews and stuff was just unbelievably weird.
posted by PercussivePaul at 8:14 AM on September 28, 2007

Seconding St. Peter's and the Pantheon in Rome. St. Peter's was impossible to take in while I was there. It is HUGE, but everything is so well proportioned I lost my sense of scale. In a very few minutes I was numb to it.

Also seconding the old Yellowstone Lodge. That's my favorite building in the world...You know God visits Yellowstone in the summers and He always stays in the old Lodge. He likes to sit out on the balcony on the second floor watching the people and the geyser basin, drinking coffee, and talking to the ravens....
posted by RussHy at 8:18 AM on September 28, 2007

Hagia Sofia, Istanbul

shout out to Pericles!
posted by fingers_of_fire at 8:23 AM on September 28, 2007

I don't like the building all that much, but every time (of the many many times) I went to the Hart Senate office building I was very impressed with the atrium, especially Alexander Calder's Mountains and Clouds, that dominates the space.
posted by OmieWise at 8:36 AM on September 28, 2007

British Museum

More specifically, I would suggest the British Museum Reading Room.
posted by buxtonbluecat at 8:39 AM on September 28, 2007

Milwaukee Art Museum.
posted by escabeche at 8:48 AM on September 28, 2007

Grand Central Station, NYC
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Salt Lake City Public Library, SLC.
posted by entropone at 8:53 AM on September 28, 2007

Union Station (Washington DC).

St. Sernin basilica (Toulouse, France).
posted by rtha at 9:02 AM on September 28, 2007

Canary Wharf Underground Station, London.
posted by roomaroo at 9:24 AM on September 28, 2007

Cincinnati Museum Center's mosaics in the Art Deco dome is pretty cool.

Munich's Frauenkirche is very, very pretty.
posted by cooker girl at 9:58 AM on September 28, 2007

Saint-Martin-des-Champs, a part of the Musée des Arts et Métiers
posted by jazzido at 10:14 AM on September 28, 2007

Well, it's beautiful, awe inspiring, large scale, public, AND interior but it still might not be what you're looking for: Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.
posted by fuzzbean at 10:34 AM on September 28, 2007

The LA Museum of Natural History is huge and awe-inspiring.
posted by klangklangston at 10:34 AM on September 28, 2007

Nthing Grand Central and the Old Faithful Inn.

Adding
30th Street Station, Philadelphia
Central Atrium of the Field Museum, Chicago
And my hands-down most cathedral-like experience of a public building anywhere in the US:
The Library of Congress, Jefferson building. Must be seen.
posted by Miko at 10:46 AM on September 28, 2007

interior of palace of versailles
posted by letahl at 11:00 AM on September 28, 2007

I've been told the Neptune Society's Columbarium in San Francisco is amazing, particularly the stained glass. I have yet to make it there, but it's on the list.
posted by a_green_man at 11:05 AM on September 28, 2007

See this site (from this post) for some libraries.
posted by fidelity at 11:09 AM on September 28, 2007

BCE Place, Toronto. Possibly my single favourite interior space I have ever seen. The photo doesn't even begin to do justice to the poetry of air and space.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 11:32 AM on September 28, 2007

San Giovanni Battista outside of Florence, Italy, the "Church of the Highway."
posted by moonlet at 11:33 AM on September 28, 2007

The Grand Council Chamber in the Doge's Palace in Venice Italy;

the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC;

and, all the great interiors in Rome (St. Peter's, The Sistine Chapel, The Pantheon).
posted by lorenzism at 12:06 PM on September 28, 2007

The interior of the main gallery (a.k.a. the big eye) at Museu Oscar Niemeyer, in Curitiba, Paraná, southern Brasil.
posted by AnyGuelmann at 12:13 PM on September 28, 2007

More here. And also, the underwater curve tunnel that leads to the tower is also a pretty amazing space (here, here, here)
posted by AnyGuelmann at 12:22 PM on September 28, 2007

I agree, nthing the Niemeyer in Curitiba, cos many of the others look as I expected them to look. Especially St Peter's. British Museum is also calming more than awe-inspiring
posted by Wilder at 12:52 PM on September 28, 2007

Samsung Hall at the Asian Art Museum.
posted by Lynsey at 12:55 PM on September 28, 2007

Sorry, seconding it! When I arrived in Curitiba, it was like Switzerland with cowboys. I soooo did not expect a building like this. Awesome in every sense.
posted by Wilder at 12:55 PM on September 28, 2007

Musee d' orsay, Paris. I want to live in that place. The art aint too bad either.
posted by Mr. Ugh at 1:03 PM on September 28, 2007

Hah!

I always thought Suleymaniye was better than Hagia Sophia and Sultan Ahmet, because it is bigger, it just doesn't look as big as it is.
posted by OldReliable at 1:12 PM on September 28, 2007

theres a government building in the hague that just blows my mind - all glass and white girders
posted by dnc at 4:33 PM on September 28 [+] [!]

You are refering to the city hall / public library (scroll down and click on the thumbnail) by Richard Meier, which indeed is quite impressive.
posted by swordfishtrombones at 1:14 PM on September 28, 2007

I don't know if it qualifies as large but Thorncrown Chapel is beautiful
posted by Justin Case at 1:56 PM on September 28, 2007

seconding the National Building Museum in DC.
posted by jessamyn at 2:41 PM on September 28, 2007

The Great Hall at Chicago Union Station
The lobby of Tribune Tower in Chicago
Westminster Abbey, London
The lobby of the Grand Hyatt in Washington DC
posted by SisterHavana at 3:15 PM on September 28, 2007

a_green_man, I'll have to check out Columbarium myself.

LA County Museum of Art (LACMA) has a really nice plaza. The interior of the Japanese pavilion is also worth noting.
posted by hobbes at 4:59 PM on September 28, 2007

The Mesquita, in Cordoba, Spain.
posted by naturesgreatestmiracle at 5:05 PM on September 28, 2007

The Bradbury Building in LA.
posted by languagehat at 5:49 PM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Krannert Center in Urbana Illinois has a lobby that is a large city block of continuous walnut parquet. It is one of the most beautiful interior spaces you'll ever see. Unfortunately, they have now disrupted it with numerous stores, displays and cafes, but it's still incredible. Oddly, lots of shots online of the rather pedestrian (not to mention crumlbing) exterior but not of the amazing lobby. (Here's a tiny slice of it, and the floor plan, which gives you a certain indication of scale. The Great Hall seats 1,000.)
posted by nax at 6:05 PM on September 28, 2007

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York.
posted by booksandlibretti at 6:59 PM on September 28, 2007

My answers are (almost) all from Ottawa, for lack of traveling.

Certain sections of the Parliament Buildings;

uOttawa's second-most-southernmost building, SITE -- it's my favourite building in Ottawa;

the National Gallery's entrance hall. It's the one immortalized in it's logo. But only when it's not filled with interactive crap from the latest pet-project.

I forget the name, but there's this one wonderful basilica on a massive hill in Montreal.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 7:06 PM on September 28, 2007

Just repeating Grand Central Terminal because the more you explore into its history and architecture, the more it reveals.
posted by anildash at 7:24 PM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

The casts room in the V&A museum in London. I dragged my parents there and made them shut their eyes before they stepped in. They were suitably impressed.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:55 PM on September 28, 2007

2nding Blue mosque, istanbul

Sainte Chapelle (stained glass makes it look 20x bigger than it is) on the Ile de la cite, paris.
posted by lalochezia at 8:09 PM on September 28, 2007

I forget the name, but there's this one wonderful basilica on a massive hill in Montreal.>/i>

Oratoire St Joseph?
posted by seawallrunner at 8:31 PM on September 28, 2007

Rothko Chapel
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:14 PM on September 28, 2007

I just returned from a conference at Chicago's McCormick Place.

In some downtime I walked through as much of it as I could. It's the largest unified structure (not all one building, but a set of linked spaces) I've ever seen/been in.
The logistics of it boggled my mind. It was kind of amazing, if not necessarily beautiful.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:46 AM on September 29, 2007

I'd second Kyoto Station... in a country filled with amazing architecture, it's one of the most amazing I saw.

Also the Shinjuku NS Building in Tokyo, a hollow 'sky scraper'.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:41 PM on September 29, 2007

n-thing St. Peter's in Rome and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. The blue Mosque is very, very beautiful but didn't give me the same gut-punched sense upon entering it that the other two do. I had exactly the same experience as someone above, St. Peter's is so, so, so big, but so well-proportioned that you lose your sense of how big it is quickly. Until you get to the central (altar?) , with the serpentine dark columns making the canopy look like it's floating, and that thing is huge, but it's dwarfed by the space.

[The Pantheon didn't hit me as hard, oddly, because so many of the formative public spaces of my youth are based on it (govt buildings in Wash DC, and DC's metro stations a bit). But yes, the Pantheon would be the one to go to.]

Loved these when I was a kid, though they now feel old/too routine to be inspiring:
the Air and Space Museum in Wash DC; the underground/under-fountain cafe/corridor in the National Gallery,Wash DC (under here); the entry to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (with the elephant in the middle, and the tiger, and the giant decaying squid tank on the right side) and the hall in the Smithsonian with the blue whale suspended from the ceiling; any space that was bounded by giant fish tanks.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:39 PM on September 29, 2007

Bahá'í House of Worship in Wilmette, IL. (interior)
posted by Rhomboid at 7:49 AM on October 25, 2007

oh, I want to go back to rome. Just remembering walking through the doors of St. Peter's made me shiver just now.

seriously, if you travel once in your life, travel to rome.
posted by Chris4d at 1:55 PM on October 29, 2007