I love diagrams and blueprints, maybe the same as everybody who attends engineering school. Poring over schematics for a building or some machine puts me in a different head space and I lose myself, lose all sense of time as I trace through the lines, trying to visualize the place or the object.
I wonder if it's similar to the aesthetic pleasure Gabriel gets from art.
With blueprints, an architect or an engineer has taken something and broken it down, flattened it, leaving behind nothing but the perfect two-dimensional plan for constructing it. With a painting, an artist has made a representational image, trying to express humanity or emotion through narrative and style. But as you study either one, the schematic or the work of art, maybe what's going on in the brain is the same.
I found the blueprints for every museum in San Bavón, stacked in a drawer in Gabriel's study.
Most of the layouts follow classical designs. They appear symmetrical at first, but when studied, the plans reveal that the architects cheated to cover for the modern practicalities of wiring and plumbing. That wouldn't be obvious from inside the museums; it's only something you'd notice when looking at the blueprints. But it's these imperfections and tricks that make the designs all the more beautiful to me.
Especially the unexplained parts.
There are strange lost corridors that don't connect to anything, and were certainly not meant for common use. Besides the original architect, I wonder how many people are even aware of these hidden passages.