Giving a building a “stamp of strangeness” is not, we felt, about making things simply look unfamiliar. We wanted there to be a sense of wonder. We did this by exposing steel beams, ductwork, electrical conduits, and plumbing pipes throughout. We enclosed the music rehearsal studios with accordion-configured glass walls. We added a plasma ball atop the sweeping “physics stair.” The spiral stair itself hangs mysteriously in mid-air only by glass and steel treads bolted one to the other. We festooned the exterior Stair Tower with steel “branches” bearing bright orange “berries.” We made the “out-of-the box” room so it could, at times, seem to disappear. The daringly cantilevered, all-glass, cylindrical main entrance to the Winklevoss Performing Arts Center will have a heavy dose of strangeness. So, too, will its curving steel benches out front at curbside that we designed in-lieu of bollards standardly used to barricade wayward cars. The immediate questions these strange things beg are “What is that thing?” or “How does it work?” However, the ultimate question we hope to elicit is “Why?” – “Why is that thing the way it is?” and “Why not something else?” We believe wonder is an important state of mind. By questioning things and seeing some of them as merely arbitrary, a student begins to think independently. A building with a stamp of strangeness can nudge students into a habit of asking not just “What?” or “How?” but importantly, “Why and why not?”