Over the past few months I have been doing an Inventive Architecture course with Homemade Education. I have done a fashion history course with them before and that was really fun, so I wanted to do another topic. Over six one-hour sessions, I learned about architecture and the ways it can effect people and their emotions. Here are my five favourite facts from the course:
- Despite being built in 1965, no-one knew for sure what the BT Tower in London was used for until MP Kate Hoey announced it in 1993. It was used for microwave telecommunications in case of nuclear war.
- When a husband died in California, his wife inherited all his fortune so she decided to build a house. This house ended up taking 38 years to build! The lady kept adding rooms and random staircases. The builders weren’t even sure how many rooms there were in the end!
- The Kindergarten de Katze is an elementary school in Germany shaped like a cat! The space is meant for one hundred children. You enter through the mouth of the cat and exit through the bottom. There is also a slide coming from the back to the playground!
- Did you know armies can’t walk in step (walking together in time) on bridges? This is because there would be too much force put on the bridge so it would end up breaking.
- The Tower Bridge in London isn’t actually made of stone. The stone you can see is actually the cladding to cover up 11,000 tonnes of steel-work!
I have learned so much about interesting buildings and structures all around the world. Thank you Kate for another amazing course!
Picture Credits
- Kindergarten de Katze, Von Zonk43 – Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 3.0
- “British Telecom Tower” by James.Stringer is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
- “Tower Bridge” by Dave Straven is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
