Jonathan Glancey on Surrealist Architecture in the Guardian

Human intervention creating surrealist structure vs. structure working with nature to create sense of surrealism in surroundings.

Witness what happens when rain falls through the great “oculus” in the dome of the Pantheon in Rome: it disappears into a great decorative brass drain. It is beautiful to watch, and quite surreal.

Bringing the outside in, but in an unfamiliar manner. Accustomed to us being surrounded by rain, rather than the other way around. Also unusual for rain to be within the confines of an ‘inside’.

When US structural engineers investigated the enormous domed hall Albert Speer had designed for Germania (as Berlin rebuilt for Hitler, post-victory, was to be called), they found that, when the building was full of chanting crowds, clouds would form from their breath in the underside of the dome, and a light rain would fall. How Wagnerian. How surreal.

Using the physics of the architecture to create a surreal experience without any unnecessary addition to the environment. Poetic, pathetic fallacy.