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This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Julia Barton has been thinking about what happens when we build big, maybe because she grew up in Dallas in the Go-Go 80s.

Big football arenas, big freeways, big houses, Texans love big.

Dallas built a new city hall in 1978. Designed by IMPAY.

It's a huge trapezoid, jutting over a wide plaza.

It's kind of wedge-shaped, but upside down, so the widest and largest floors on the top.

When I was a kid, sometimes I'd go up to the top floor of City Hall with my friends.

That's where the vending machines were. They stalked my favorite candy bar, Caramello.

I am a male lover, Caramello with my family.

Then we'd sit by the windows, eating chocolate and looking down over the plaza.

And I think, wow, this is so cool.

Here in high school, Julia went to a protest down below in the plaza.

And those same city hall windows were now hulking over us.

We could see our tiny reflections in the glass.

It made me feel like a nobody.

And that this whole event was a waste of time.

And all of the big things in my environment seemed to be saying the same thing.

I'm important, you're nobody.

...