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Hollis presents us with his interpretation of Thomas Cole’s painting The Architect’s Dream through thirteen stories of historic buildings/structures. Cole’s painting showcases numerous and disparate buildings of old co-mingling and showing no wear or age. As Hollis shows us though this is never the reality. The buildings we build today may be something completely different a century or even a decade down the road.

From the Parthenon and Hagia Sophia to the Berlin Wall and Vegas’s Venetian, the reader follows the evolution of these buildings. While they were built with a particular purpose in mind, none of them remained the same nor do they serve the same purpose. But all of them still maintain their history, most notably in the people they serve or have served. And that’s the main point, while these buildings evolve they evolve because we choose to do so. We alter our environment, both the natural and the manmade, to fit our needs. While some of Hollis’s stories stray too far into the “secret lives” of the people, he paints a great picture about the resiliency and malleability of our built space.