For my school’s eight grade field trip, we went to the Perot Museum in downtown Dallas. At the time, I was skeptical about the field trip, as spending the whole day at a science museum was not my definition of fun. However, when we got there, I did not really care at all about the actual science stuff that we were supposed to be doing, but instead just walked around the building, both the inside and around a courtyard outside the building. I had visited downtown Dallas many times before, and had seen this building many times before, but I had always seen it as a big gray box until seeing it up close. I became amazed first at the uniqueness of the architecture but then how the building also kept its main purpose as a museum at hand.

The first thing that I saw in my trip to the Perot Museum, that I guess I had missed in the past, was the escalator that cuts through the side of the building and allows you to look out into the city of Dallas. The architect knew the building was going to be a science museum, so numerous windows would not be ideal for visitors and the exhibits within the building. Therefore, windows could only be placed on places where there would not be any artifacts or exhibits, one of those places being the stairwells. This was incredibly impressive to me at the time as to how the building worked around the fact that its purpose was to be a museum and was still made into a unique, impressive design. In my opinion, without these unique inputs into the building with the staircase and the placement of the windows, it would look like a prison and would not be inviting to the kids that make up a large portion of the visitors.

In conclusion, this building influenced me in positive way, as it got me thinking about the unique ways that designers and architects must work around the general purposes behind the buildings that they are creating. Further, it gave me a greater appreciation for the unique ideas that designers are forced to come up with in trying to solve problems that they may have never seen before. In total, while the Perot Museum likely did not serve its purpose to me in teaching me about science, it did influence me positively in thinking and appreciating many buildings and the work that designers perform.