Comments on: Large public interior

Question: Large public interior

comatose — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:43:35 -0800

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.

By: mmascolino

mmascolino — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:50:59 -0800

Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London is pretty impressive.

By: beaucoupkevin

beaucoupkevin — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:53:49 -0800

Grand Central Station in New York City.

By: mmascolino

mmascolino — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:55:45 -0800

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.

By: roofus

roofus — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:56:44 -0800

British Museum

By: jquinby

jquinby — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:57:57 -0800

The main terminal at Pudong Airport in Shanghai is enormous. I wasjetlagged and dazed, so I wasn't quite expecting it. Pretty impressive.

By: JeremiahBritt

JeremiahBritt — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:59:24 -0800

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.

By: bernsno

bernsno — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:06:00 -0800

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.

By: mmascolino

mmascolino — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:06:24 -0800

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.

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:06:59 -0800

Guggenheim Bilbao

By: misanthropicsarah

misanthropicsarah — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:10:15 -0800

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.

By: crinklebat

crinklebat — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:11:17 -0800

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.

By: sulaine

sulaine — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:17:42 -0800

Chicago Cultural Center

By: forallmankind

forallmankind — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:22:48 -0800

Notre Dame

By: Pericles

Pericles — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:30:40 -0800

Sultanahmet Mosque ("The Blue Mosque"), Istanbul.

By: dnc

dnc — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:33:07 -0800

theres a government building in the hague that just blows my mind - all glass and white girders

By: sully75

sully75 — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:45:04 -0800

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.

By: tomcooke

tomcooke — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:46:19 -0800

Flickr can be pretty good for this kind of thing. For example here are search results for "atrium" sorted by "interestingness".

By: birdlips

birdlips — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:48:16 -0800

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.

By: zachlipton

zachlipton — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:48:25 -0800

The rotunda at San Francisco's City Hall.

By: birdlips

birdlips — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:52:36 -0800

Another example of the Old Faithful Inn

By: procrastination

procrastination — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:53:30 -0800

Seconding St. Peter's Basilica, particularly because it was built almost 400 years ago. In DC, the National Building Museum is pretty cool.

By: daveleck

daveleck — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:01:19 -0800

The interior of Luxor in Las Vegas is pretty impressive.

By: thewittyname

thewittyname — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:06:37 -0800

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

By: any portmanteau in a storm

any portmanteau in a storm — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:07:42 -0800

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.

By: PercussivePaul

PercussivePaul — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:14:27 -0800

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.

By: RussHy

RussHy — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:18:18 -0800

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....

By: fingers_of_fire

fingers_of_fire — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:23:54 -0800

Hagia Sofia, Istanbul

shout out to Pericles!

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:36:04 -0800

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.

By: buxtonbluecat

buxtonbluecat — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:39:17 -0800

British Museum

More specifically, I would suggest the British Museum Reading Room.

By: escabeche

escabeche — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:48:44 -0800

Milwaukee Art Museum.

By: entropone

entropone — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:53:17 -0800

Grand Central Station, NYC
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Salt Lake City Public Library, SLC.

By: rtha

rtha — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:02:45 -0800

Union Station (Washington DC).

St. Sernin basilica (Toulouse, France).

By: roomaroo

roomaroo — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:24:56 -0800

Canary Wharf Underground Station, London.

By: cooker girl

cooker girl — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:58:38 -0800

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

Munich's Frauenkirche is very, very pretty.

By: jazzido

jazzido — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:14:57 -0800

Saint-Martin-des-Champs, a part of the Musée des Arts et Métiers

By: fuzzbean

fuzzbean — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:34:08 -0800

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.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:34:54 -0800

The LA Museum of Natural History is huge and awe-inspiring.

By: Miko

Miko — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:46:53 -0800

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.

By: letahl

letahl — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:00:01 -0800

interior of palace of versailles

By: a_green_man

a_green_man — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:05:26 -0800

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.

By: fidelity

fidelity — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:09:48 -0800

See this site (from this post) for some libraries.

By: dirtynumbangelboy

dirtynumbangelboy — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:32:11 -0800

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.

By: moonlet

moonlet — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:33:39 -0800

San Giovanni Battista outside of Florence, Italy, the "Church of the Highway."

By: lorenzism

lorenzism — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:06:46 -0800

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).

By: AnyGuelmann

AnyGuelmann — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:13:52 -0800

The interior of the main gallery (a.k.a. the big eye) at Museu Oscar Niemeyer, in Curitiba, Paraná, southern Brasil.

By: AnyGuelmann

AnyGuelmann — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:22:15 -0800

More here. And also, the underwater curve tunnel that leads to the tower is also a pretty amazing space (here, here, here)

By: Wilder

Wilder — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:52:15 -0800

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

By: Lynsey

Lynsey — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:55:52 -0800

Samsung Hall at the Asian Art Museum.

By: Wilder

Wilder — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:55:54 -0800

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.

By: Mr. Ugh

Mr. Ugh — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:03:11 -0800

Musee d' orsay, Paris. I want to live in that place. The art aint too bad either.

By: OldReliable

OldReliable — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:12:45 -0800

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.

By: swordfishtrombones

swordfishtrombones — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:14:36 -0800

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.

By: Justin Case

Justin Case — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:56:46 -0800

I don't know if it qualifies as large but Thorncrown Chapel is beautiful

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:41:22 -0800

seconding the National Building Museum in DC.

By: SisterHavana

SisterHavana — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:15:02 -0800

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

By: hobbes

hobbes — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:59:56 -0800

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.

By: naturesgreatestmiracle

naturesgreatestmiracle — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:05:50 -0800

The Mesquita, in Cordoba, Spain.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:49:00 -0800

The Bradbury Building in LA.

By: nax

nax — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:05:58 -0800

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.)

By: booksandlibretti

booksandlibretti — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:59:02 -0800

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York.

By: flibbertigibbet

flibbertigibbet — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:06:00 -0800

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.

By: anildash

anildash — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:24:26 -0800

Just repeating Grand Central Terminal because the more you explore into its history and architecture, the more it reveals.

By: Deathalicious

Deathalicious — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:55:07 -0800

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.

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:09:21 -0800

2nding Blue mosque, istanbul

Sainte Chapelle (stained glass makes it look 20x bigger than it is) on the Ile de la cite, paris.

By: seawallrunner

seawallrunner — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:31:00 -0800

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

Oratoire St Joseph?

By: Joseph Gurl

Joseph Gurl — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:14:51 -0800

Rothko Chapel

By: I_Love_Bananas

I_Love_Bananas — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:46:02 -0800

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.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 13:41:54 -0800

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'.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:39:00 -0800

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.

By: Rhomboid

Rhomboid — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 07:49:13 -0800

Bahá'í House of Worship in Wilmette, IL. (interior)

By: Chris4d

Chris4d — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:55:49 -0800

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.