This video is about a building in the middle of a vast ocean, far away. It is an Unlikely piece of Architecture. As one approaches the building from afar it looks familiar. However, it also appears that the building is loosely tethered to the ocean below. And if you thought the same, you are correct. The building is made of brick and mortar. It has rooms and windows, walls and parapets, flat roofs and even smokestacks. But as one backs away it’s clear there’s not just one building but two. The buildings identical in every way, joined by horizontal skyways scattered across parallel facades. Each transparent walkway just wide enough for a human, or the like, to pass one way. The buildings are reminiscent of masonry architecture, in any American city, at the turn of the 20th century. The vertical ribbon windows that march across the facades remind one of a 1960’s or 70’s office tower. The buildings are opaque and yet transparent, common but modern too. The building functions like any other and yet the composition implies that it too works upside down. There are 6 large smokestacks per building. 3 at the top and 3 at the bottom. There is a mechanical process integral to the architecture. Something is manufactured here. At the top the industrial sized monoliths expel vapor and at the bottom, what seemed to be physical columns from afar are actually salt water that pours directly into the ocean. The six transformers, set within the building cores, operate to power, cool and protect the automated systems of the architecture. Those that work here understand that the building embodies a tension between manufacture and administration, industrial labor and desk work, the physical and cerebral. And the most remarkable thing about the building as a whole, which is also the most obvious, is that it has no earthly foundation. Nothing to rest upon. It simply floats above a vast expanse of ocean with nothing is sight. But why or how? The answer lies in the architecture. After all, the mind is an infinite playground for the invisible. And sometimes thoughts become real. But this, after all, is not. It’s just a drawing by an architect of an unlikely piece of architecture. I’m Doug Patt we’ll see you next time.
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