Traveling for the love of architecture

Just before I left on my first trip abroad, a friend’s father said to me, “you know, people are more or less the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently.”

While I would disagree somewhat, since in my experience ingrained cultural and religious beliefs translate to some pretty radical differences between people, his remark did get me to pay attention to something I probably wouldn’t have otherwise — how people build their houses.

I’ll confess I don’t know much about architecture, I couldn’t tell you a Gothic cathedral from a Baroque one and my knowledge gets even fuzzier when you move into myriad of styles in Asia. But despite a certain amount of ignorance I’ve always been fascinated by the differences in architecture around the world.

The Independent Traveler recently did a round up of some of the top sites around the world for architecture buffs. Some are pretty obvious (Barcelona and Rome), but others might not immediately come to mind when you think of architecture, like Istanbul or Buenos Aires. The list is worth a look if you’re interested in architecture.

However, I remain somewhat attached to my original obsession — the actual dwellings people live in. As someone who believes that geography effects personality, it sort of follows that architecture probably does as well.

In those quieter moments of travel I often find myself thinking about the houses around me, what it would be like to live in a bamboo stilt house? A floating house? A cave? An apartment in a Gaudi building? A monastery perched atop sheer cliffs?

And architecture has added a few places to my list of must-sees, for instance I’ve long wanted to visit the bizarre town of Cappadocia, Turkey or the abandoned Pod City in Taiwan. (The Art History Archive has some other examples of unusual architecture around the world).

[Photo by Alaskan Dude, Flickr]