Blanton Museum of Art and Brazos Parking Garage

The Blanton Museum of Art and UT's Brazos Parking Garage make a pair, an unhappy one, but a pair--a spatial pair. The experience of the museum begins, for most of us in cars, at the parking garage. The garage has minimal roles to play, it lets you park your car and takes your money. The one role that is rarely explored nor designed into a garage is its "in between" role of wayfinding. Personally I think we should ask a lot more out of our parking garages especially at their premium rates. Kevin Lynch's 1960 research book "Image of the City" coined wayfinding and imageability both terms having explicit relationships with the human experience with a city's parts notably its edges and paths. Lynch's "paths" are comprised of the sidewalks, trails, ground patterns or any other texture that allows people to travel; these components of guidance help shape a person’s physical memory of a place. After descending from the garage stairs, the choices of paths are many but the paths leading to the Blanton Museum are confusing perhaps because they are tertiary amidst the other paths. But getting there is not the only problem, the Blanton Museum has a definitive backside to its building and the rear faces the garage. The "back of house" is the entry facade for those who drove in a car so that becomes a memory or not. A groundwork sculpture was installed at the rear of the building therefore walking toward it would seem logical if seeing art was the motive for the trip, not to mention, a clue for the entry doors. The only public entrance can be found on the "front" of the building by way of a small sign pointing toward its direction. A variation of wayfinding to a public building should be direct and logical facilitated by the guidance of paths and edges.