The Museum of Human Imagination

Every house should have a library. I wouldn't mind mine looking something like the Library of Human Imagination:

From TED:

The origins of the Library of Human Imagination were a disparate set of subjects. Like many collectors, I started out collecting in one area and inevitably migrated to others as a picture began to emerge about what it is that interests me.

I was interested in the history of science and technology. I was also interested in beautiful art books -- large or oversized books that enabled you to get a real sense of the artistry. (The reality of a large canvas is so much more powerful than a small one.) I was also interested in the history of writing, the history of medicine -- and especially the history of the book, which led me to an interest in the history of the Bible, which is the longest continually published book in Western civilization.

So, when I started, I did not have an overarching thematic center; I had a series of interests. But after a period of years, it became clear that there was a common theme to what interested me about all those things: They were all about dimensions of human imagination. Only after perhaps 10 years did I see that there was a real thematic center to what I was doing, and then I began to work at it.

The architecture of the space is an Escher-like wonder -- a series of staircases that run up and down, creating this illusory sense that space has been turned inside-out and upside-down.

There's another equally important thought behind the design, which dates back to the Dutch at the beginning of the Enlightenment. The Dutch, who were the great sailors, brought back artifacts from all around the world, and they collected them in what they called "cabinets of curiosities." The Library was specifically designed to create that sense of wonder. The glass bridge, when you begin, is a metaphor for a leap of imagination: the classic story of imagination as an "Aha! moment -- a leap across space to get from here to there with nothing between.

From the tumbling block pattern on the floor to the lighting to the design of the ceiling vault, everything about the room was designed to reflect the sort of room that would hold the history of human imagination.