After 8 hours on the bus today we saw (and came back from) the Taj Mahal. During the tour the idea of organizing a project of this magnitude while still attempting symmetry was probably the most daunting. The size of these sites. After getting back I made sure to get some internet to look into the site. The “management team” was actually 37 individuals in charge of specific portions of the design and execution. Larger portions such as the layout were left to a single person (One designer, one architect, one inlayer and one mason) and construction was performed by craftsman under their supervision. From my initial inspection of the documents available to me at this time, it appears that the majority of work was in fact from a master template. With twenty thousand people working on this project over the 20 years of its construction there is and was a monumental amount of coordination without any of the digital tools we take for granted. The building itself was spectacular, the onion dome is without question a feat of engineering and I would hazard that current approaches w2ould make making something like that impossible even today. There is something incredibly awe inspiring about seeing something that people have made without the use of existing tech. The most interesting approach was the use of the bamboo scaffolding. The scaffold allowed for the generation of the dome as well as the distribution of the stresses in the dome during construction. It seems they are using the same technique on the minaret that is being repaired in the north east corner of the compound. Again like yesterday I wish I could have had some signage or research done on the location. I was originally expecting the ever present signage describing and explaining what it is that I am looking at. The epitaphs in calligraphy are beautiful sayings and knowing and translating some of them would have just added to the grandness of the location. I would love to see a group of Indian preservationists handle the making of a more interactive experience without the requirement for the tour guide or the local historian. Perhaps someone at the college would be interested in undertaking this kind of project.