Dream Dictionary

Where houses represent your inner architecture or personal dynamics, dreaming of buildings has more of an association with work, goals and the career path. Moving through a city of large buildings can symbolize your desire to receive acknowledgment. You interact in a public marketplace and shops when your are exploring self worth related to your career. The dreams that take place in an office setting can portray your feelings about work.

Buildings sometimes appear as rickety structures, representing how you grow to meet a future that has not yet been erected or completed. Buildings can be places in which you are lost or searching for something, as in the case of searching for a new identity when changing jobs.

By traveling to a specific floor or level of consciousness, you can also find yourself outside of your work building or on the roof as you take an objective view of leaving a job because the ceiling isn't high enough. Stairs going up can symbolize exploring aspirations, while stairs going down symbolize retracing steps or understanding the root of your motivation. The floor of a structure can be indicative of levels of awareness or may be associated with the meaning of the number involved: See Numbers. You stand on the ground floor of awareness and travel upward to achieve your ideals, or downward to find those things that you keep hidden below. Elevators and escalators in a building can also symbolize aspirations or how your upward or downward journey feels orchestrated beyond your control.

If the building is associated with food, you are exploring more fulfilling work. If the building is a factory, the message can be about learning new skills that can make you more effective. A utility building can have associations of how your inner dynamics or beliefs are operating. A library can reveal the ideas you 'store.' The church relates to spiritual ideas, while the school relates to learning something new. A warehouse can have a message about the need to sort through outworn ideas that are being stored. Remember that the building is personifying you.

The roof of a structure shows limitations. As a setting of activity, something taking place on a roof can portray your desire to break through barriers in achieving your ambitions. When the ‘sky is the limit’ the ceiling can block your ambitions, suggesting how self-defeating ideas may be blocking your ability to discover success.

See also Houses and Buildings.