Passage: The committee had asked the architect for a building that would 'speak to the city's history,' and so they were unprepared for the design she set before them: a low, glass-skinned pavilion that seemed to dissolve into the plaza rather than command it. Where they had imagined columns and a weighty cornice, she gave them transparency. History, she explained, was not only the monuments a city raised but the open squares it had always left for its citizens to gather in; her building honored the second tradition by refusing to obstruct it. The committee, who had come prepared to defend grandeur, found themselves instead reconsidering what grandeur was for.