These last few days have been nucking futz. I’ll write it up if I survive until Saturday. We were about to go with a bizarre fractured tower thing until I came up with this idea at the 11th hour.
Monthly Archive for October, 2006
So I was asked to do the massing; the other people I’m working with are figuring out the circulation of the ground floor, the parking spaces, etc. (Seriously difficult problems, in this case; the plot is at an intersection and there’s water behind it, so three sides are off-limits for services and parking ramps, meaning we have to cram everything onto one always-not-long-enough side.)
As this project is on an unbelievably merciless fast-track—the client wants to show his shiny tower at a developer’s expo at the end of the month, we need to give the fairly detailed drawings to the model maker on Thursday, and the client wants to see the form on Monday—I’m feeling a whee tad extremely pressured. This is a multi-multi-million dollar project for a “landmark” tower in a giant new Dubai development (the “Business Bay”) anchored by Zaha Hadid’s “Dancing Towers” (damn is she incredibly over-rated). If I fuck this up then I’ll lose the respect of my seniors, in not obvious but certainly immediate terms. Meanwhile, if I succeed and design something stunning in, oh, the next day, then a certain amount of confidence and respect will be cemented in my favor.
Okay, this is just a long way of saying that I’m stuck. Damn design block! Fear of success—the mother of all fears.
There’s no such thing as destiny.
If the future was written out, then it’d already be the past. We can’t live both ahead and behind the past.
Therefore, there’s no such thing as destiny. It’s too bad, the idea of life as being on immutable rails is a comfortable thought.
The other thing they do is talk really, really quietly to each other. Really. If it’s just me and them in the office, I won’t even realize that they’re talking unless I actually look with mine own eyes. It’s kind of suspicious, like they’re plotting… evil.
*Note: The following dialogue is a reconstructed approximation and may not be entirely accurate.
The Girl: Dearest, did you bring the bag of severed cat ears?
The Guy: Yes, Honey, relabeled “Intern-Grade Semi-Meat Fragments,” like you said.
The Girl: Oh, my Sterling Knight, thank you. I’ve already sneaked the bag of filet mignon; let us place our surprise within the cafeteria kitchen in time for lunch.
The Guy: Of course, my Desert Spring. May I inquire about the ants?
The Girl: Elegantly dumped into the cappuccino machine, Rampaging Crusader of My Heart. What of the 14 megaton thermonuclear warhead?
The Girl: Ah yes, Mr. Kim delivered payment on that yest—
[from over the divider] Gary: Heeeey guys, what’s going on?
The Girl & The Guy: Oh… it’s you.
Gary: Yeah, hey, do you guys know what the turning radius for parking lot ramps is? You know, like, how—
The Girl: It’s 4.5.
Gary: Awesome, great, thanks! [sits back down]
The Guy: The cyanide?
The Girl: Cleverly injected into his Mentos, Crown Prince of My Pelvis.
[heard in the next cubicle] Gary: Yo, JM, would you like a Mento?
JM: Sure man, thanks! Hmm, I’ve never had this flavor before.
Gary: You’ve never had mint?
JM: This is mint? It tastes like OH MY GOD MY MUCUS MEMBRANES WHY?!!!
[overhearing] The Guy: Oh, my FDA Grade-A Lover, your brilliance is simply too much! If only we could make gentle Christian hand-holding right here and now!
The Girl: FDA… Grade-A… what?
The Guy: …shut it bitch, it’s hard thinking of this crap!
Hey bitches, guess what, for the next twenty days I’m part of a 4-person rush job to design an office tower in Dubai. Since it’s, well, Dubai, it can be more crazy than your usual Houston Glass Box. It needs to be ready for an expo at the end of this month, and it has to go out to the model makers on the 19th, so that means we need the form, the plans, the elevations, etc etc by then. The client wants to see how it might look on Monday, so tonight we’re going to come up with some ideas for the form.
In other words, this is my chance to sort-of design a not-quite skyscraper. Fuck yeah! All I need to do is come with an unbelievably awesome design by tomorrow morning—no problem!…?
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