What A Great Line
A friend of Megan McArdle calls the Boston city hall "a poured concrete Vogon love poem. What a great line, and entirely appropriate of a hideous example of public architecture. But I would have singled out a different Boston structure, the Peabody Terrace Apartments at Harvard.
Since this is the last time I may be hitting the theme of Vogon poetry for a while, I laughed the other day on a course on the Roman emperers when the professor said that Nero would force the upper class to attend his musical and poetry performances, and that some invitees where known to fake death to try to escape.
Gringo:
There is some irony about the Peabody Terrace apartments' design. If the designers were trying to be more "efficient," trying to save energy by having elevators stop on every third floor, then they contradicted themselves when they designed an energy sieve of a concrete building that was apparently without insulation. I am reminded of those glassy modern homes popular many decades ago. Pretty perhaps, but energy sieves. Great for LA, not so great for Arizona and Massachusetts.
June 7, 2008, 4:27 am