SYMBOL

Tim May tcmay at got.net
Sun Sep 16 09:47:07 PDT 2001


On Sunday, September 16, 2001, at 12:16 PM, John Young wrote:
>
> Ok, daring is needed, that is the architect's drug of choice
> and sale, but recall the building code of Vitruvius: commodity,
> firmness and delight. The architectural delight drug needs the
> other two or why bother building at all, just take a pill. The
> skyscraper bounty of which is in short supply downtown
> these days. No matter, it will come raging back like a bull
> on Monday, or will that market crash too.

This is an interesting thread, touching on architecture, safety, 
insurance, aesthetics, symbolism, and libertarian issues of whether 
coerced-funding approaches should be used (of course not...).

The Getty Center. This is the marble-and-steel art museum built by the 
Getty Foundation on a hill overlooking L.A.

I've been meaning to talk about this for the last several of these 
"Symbol" posts. The Getty Center in Los Angeles is the most amazing 
building/complext of buildings I have seen in many years. It was built 
totally with private funding (Getty, obviously), it has magnificent 
lines, it's open, and it looks to be very safe.

(Safe from fire, partly by being low enough to be evacuable. Maybe safe 
from an earthquake at the three sigma level of probability...time will 
tell.)

This may be a matter of personal aeshetics, as I have since I was a kid 
disliked the "concrete canyons" of Manhattan. The looming Bauhaus boxes 
of the World Trade Center never inspired me in the slightest way. By 
contrast, the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis in Athens 
really _did_ inspire me. I guess this is why I like the Getty Center so 
much.

Your mileage may vary.

I would never stop anyone from living and working in one of these 
concrete canyon anthills. They can commute in from Westchester County, 
ride elevators for 20 minutes, and then turn into crispy critters in 
their towering infernos. No skin off my nose.

Some years ago (mid 1960s), IBM decided to move the bulk of its 
headquarters operations _out_ of Manhattan to places like Armonk and 
Yorktown Heights, north of NYC. They found many of their execs were 
already living in those areas, and younger workers could buy actual 
homes in the suburban areas.

Likewise, my old company, Intel, decided 30 years ago to embark on a 
strategy of decentralizing operations so that a disaster in one area (an 
earthquake, most likely) would not cripple the company. They 
decentralized to Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico, and now many other sites.

Antheaps are for ants.

--Tim May





More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list