When I do my cardio at the gym, I choose a treadmill facing a big window.

In the morning dark, the glass acts like a mirror reflecting the inside of the gym. Those people behind me, doing lunges and lifts. I’m locked in place as I run so I see the flit of my pale legs running.

As the sky lights up the jacaranda trees and the houses across the street take form from the mechanical world of the fitness equipment.

There are a few houses and a two story office building. The houses are a unique kind of “found art” material special to my town. During the depression, a creative polish immigrant took concrete-typle material meant for demolitions and repurposed it. He strategically cut and stacked like bricks into an inhabitable house. Then another one. It catches the eye, since it’s not like anything else. It’s precise and even like bricks, but it’s a decent enough house. It’s become cute and the neighborhood is registered as historical “folk architecture.” They do have red tile roofs.

The office building next door was built more recently—maybe 20 or 30 years ago. With two stories and tall smooth columns is evoking a modern Romanesque style to break up the boxy right angles. Next to the red tile roofs, it pleases my eyes and make me think of Roman villas.

This summer we were looking at the ruins of Roman aqueducts in Germany. Germany and Rome had an uneasy relationship, but the Spanish that came over to California appreciated, emulated and kept the Roman flavor going. A whole group of people refer to themselves as Latin—Latin American.

Looking out the window going nowhere as fast as I can I think about those buildings. Architecture is so many things—shelter, comfort and doing business.

The office building is standard underneath the exterior, with ordinary struts and sheetrock inside. They took the time to make it pretty on the outside. I see that it was built so it could be reskinned to show a different style.

What if these memories of Rome wanted squashing? The bones of business could wash its face and put different makeup on very convincingly.

The scrap house couldn’t change that fast. A different roof, yes. But it was deeply what it was and couldn’t change its shape.

And I run. The weight plates clang and people grunt behind me as we all work with the material we’ve found in ourselves.