It has been said that the Cathedral of Learning appears to be unfinished on the outside, to show that you are never done learning. The Nationality Rooms have another lesson to teach. The rooms themselves are like living things, but remain unchanging. By this, it is implied that the rooms are rooted in the history and culture of the heritage they represent. History doesn’t change, but it is a living tool used as a means to change and evolve. It is the story of how people share their individuality with each other. The Nationality Rooms are created to express this idea: share a culture in order to unify as human beings. Though very different, the rooms have commonalities that bind them.
It is important to know about the rules of the rooms, and how each is created to understand this. Some rules for the committees that design and construct them include: 1. No alteration after they have been dedicated. 2. Committees must be formed and have enough funding to begin construction (and they will get whatever room they are assigned). 3. The design must reflect the aesthetic of the culture before 1787: the year that the University of Pittsburgh was founded. 4. There should be no flags, violence, or living people depicted.
Note that these rules provide guidelines to the goal of the rooms, which can both help and hinder the process of creating the rooms. For instance, the African Heritage room is the only room so far to represent an entire continent, because committees that were formed for separate countries could not come up with the funding. This has made for a place that is full of ethnic facts and history, in an attempt to let visitors know just how diverse Africa is in culture. There is a space that shows a map of modern and ancient Africa, and a list of over 2000 written and spoken languages. This is to show we must know the past in order to plan for the future.
Another committee affected by the rules was in charge of French heritage. They requested to have a room that overlooked the Heinz chapel in the back because of the importance of architecture in French art. The Heinz chapel is modeled after the Eglise Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, France.
While it is not in the rules, what is represented in every one is the importance of education. The African Heritage room has seats resembling that of chieftain stools: where chiefs would sit and discuss. Some rooms are modelled after schools, educational practices, or classes in other nations. Each is packed with details and secrets, waiting to be learned. Even mistakes, purposefully painted in give lessons to those who find them. The walls and materials reveal little pieces of insight. In the Hungarian room, the ceiling has symmetrical paintings of birds and trees…or so it seems. The painter had actually purposefully made a mistake in one of the birds to ruin the symmetry. This isn’t the only purposefully made mistake, though. In the Swedish room, the ceiling paintings have several mistakes, but it is to add humor. For instance, one of the figures painted has two left feet. The Syria-Lebanon Room is one of two rooms that is kept locked. The artifacts and furniture inside are in need of preservation, and despite not being able to enter and explore, the value of preserving and learning about a place that is a part of an ongoing war ties with the value of preserving the lives of a people. It’s common for these rooms to have such surprises.
Throughout the year, although the rooms themselves do not change in structure, they often shift in the atmosphere of the holidays or changes in the semester. Tourists can glimpse a view of them decorated for the holidays. Around Halloween one may overhear spooky stories and of the ghost that wanders in one of the rooms. When classes begin, German language students can literally sit in the German class, surrounded by stained glass windows depicting fairytales collected by the Grimm Brothers. Professors of the university can ask for a room, or that their room is explained to their class. In the Chinese room, two lions sit guarding the door. As the semester ends, you will notice that the tops of their heads are worn down. Rumor has it that patting the head of the lions will bring you luck on your finals.
These rooms interact with the ever changing flow of people that enter them. Because of the way the rooms were created, and this flow of people, there is a blend of conversation between the visitor and the visited. “We are first and always historical-social-spatial beings, actively participating individually and collectively in the construction/production—the “becoming”—of histories, geographies, societies” (Soja). Visiting a place that stands for a representation of a people, unified is how we can learn and continue to thrive as humans. This site carries its own secrets, its own history, and mystery. But it is created as a place for learning, it shows that there is value in traditions and that finding out deeper meanings can be rewarding. In the spring of 2017, students from the Secret Pittsburgh Course at the University of Pittsburgh had the opportunity to visit the Nationality rooms. One student said,
“The [Turkish] room changed my perspective for a temporary moment, because it made me realize that while we all live in our own small city, in our own small bubbles of friends and school and personal lives, there is a whole world out there that many of us will never get to experience. That could be interpreted as something negative, but I really believe it helps people to be more open minded and more accepting of others.” (Baxi)
I myself remember the first time I visited the University of Pittsburgh. It was before I had even decided to consider attending. I came to the Cathedral of Learning around the holiday season with a group to take a tour. I had never even heard of the Nationality Rooms before, but I was truly struck by them. Each was decorated appropriately for the holidays. I learned about backgrounds and traditions from each, and I felt more connected and interested in the world around me, the world I have yet to see. However, each time I have visited since, I have realized that I am never done learning, as the Cathedral suggests. This isn’t just because I have literally taken classes in them. On each tour I have taken, I learn something new or discover something I hadn’t looked at before. These rooms are not just toured, but literally used as a place of education, there is a sense that no matter how you end up in the room, you will be immersed, and you will learn something.
They are “classrooms that teach”.
Works Cited
Baxi, Anmol. Discussion Board. Courseweb. University of Pittsburgh, Spring 2017
Soja, Edward. Thirdspace: Journeys to Lost Angeles and Ither Real-and-Imagined Places. Cambridge MA, Blackwell Publishing Inc., 1996.