How a building gained wings

A name can change how we look at a building. The hall at Byōdō-in began as an Amida hall. Its later name, Phoenix Hall, draws on the building’s open-wing shape and the phoenix figures on its roof.

In this photograph, architecture carries both forms of attention. It belongs to a specific place and period, but it also invites an image that viewers have remembered for generations.

I like the moment when a descriptive name becomes part of the experience of seeing. Once the wings have been imagined, the building’s long, low outline reads differently. The metaphor grows out of its physical form rather than covering it.