Me wrote:

“Architecture is dead. Long live architecture.” That’s the opening line of the lecture that I’ll present someday at a prestigious university. It’s also the closing line, and after I slam the microphone down and throw a chair into the crowd, I’ll be on my way to Taschen to sign a book deal for USD $4 million. You can go very far in this profession without saying much of anything, and I may as well begin now during a time when the economy has more or less crippled the industry. Don’t misunderstand my ferocious, beast-like musings simply for naïve delusion, though; this little flame I’ve got is what’s going to keep me warm at night or, alternatively, keep my step light enough to avoid setting off deadly snake-filled landmines. And get this: I’m not even speaking metaphorically.

Ideally, this article would be 800 pages long and contain as many words, all of them in huge fonts. That’s the key to importance in the world of contemporary architectural theory: few words in BIG FONTS. Example: pg. 118 of Mutations by Rem Koolhaas, et al, equates modern airports to shopping malls by typing “Airport” with an “=” below and “Mall” below that. That’s it. The next five pages equate churches to malls and government, education, museums and the military to shopping in exactly the same fashion. I’ve gotten used to such concision and I prefer it to the alternative of postmodern turtleneckery, but all of it is self-important. Incidentally, my $50 copy of Mutations has just now started to come loose from its bindings – cataclysmic foreshadowing?

Rem Koolhaas has years of experience, a Pritzker prize (architecture’s Nobel) and an international following unrivaled by that of any other architect today. Here’s what I bring to the table: irrational rage. While Rem uses brevity as a way of presenting simple -- if repetitive -- points, I’m going to use it as a vehicle to deliver my contempt efficiently. I want to take the whole industry down, and I want to do it with equal signs. By not hiring me, most firms have already signed their own explosive death warrants, so most of the work is done. Skidmore Owings & Merrill as well as Norman Foster & Partners both lost the new World Trade Center competition. Coincidence? No.

Let me put it this way:

SOM = FINISHED
FOSTER = FINISHED

At this point, they can’t even redeem themselves by deciding to hire me. I’m gone, baby. I’m forbidden fruit. That doesn’t just go for top firms, either, as this is an eight-pronged, five-dimensional attack aimed at everyone. I called all of the small firms in my hometown, and an architect at the one with the best use of the word “Architect” in the name told me that they weren’t currently hiring anyone because they had “hired someone two years ago”. ONLY TWO YEARS AGO YOU SAY? As long as you’re taking me for a stroll down memory lane why not entertain me with the story about how that was the same year that we all lost our innocence and then after your wife left you, your last hire became more like a companion than an employee to you.

You’d better swap out your normal keyboard for your screechy keyboard now, because it’s going to blow your layman’s mind to find out that I haven’t read The Fountainhead. That a fictional story about an architect is somehow important to us is probably the #2 misconception that exists about architects. #1 is that to be an architect requires a mastery of mathematics. Do this right now: step outside your door and take a look around at your neighborhood/city block. Do you see evidence of any complicated math? The life-or-death structural calculations are typically done by our higher-paid friend, the engineer. Anyway, I did know a girl who declared The Fountainhead to be the most important book ever, and though she was quite smart and did decent work I found her to be rather weak-willed and improper. There is no must-read architecture book; if there was it certainly wouldn’t be one penned by a woman who once blew smoke into the face of Frank Lloyd Wright, may he rest in peace.

Frank Lloyd Wright is the only American architect anyone should know about. If nothing else, the chef at his residence/studio went crazy and murdered his mistress, her two children and Wright’s mother with an ax while Wright was away. That’s about the most sensational story we, as a people, have to offer, but there are many more about the brilliant little man. I’ve got some dirt on Zaha Hadid, but that story I keep just for me (next to my bag of rampage!). Not as sexy, but more relevant to me, is an article about Mr. Koolhaas that tells of how he went up to his studio one night at around midnight and became very angry that no one was there working. I want to be like that, but with less overworking rage and more unpredictable, trivial rage. I’ll have to compensate for his bilingual profanity with the Thinking Man’s swearing: physical violence.

The frustration that some of the less boring architects feel is fairly evident in the fact that CARGO SHIPPING CONTAINERS are becoming a not-so-outrageous solution to certain housing problems; you know them as Afghanistani Murder Boxes, but your children may call them home. The idea of using prefabricated items in architecture is not new, but we’re basically fresh out of any other sort of innovation. Most of this is happening in obscurity, so you can put down that phone to the Department of Homeland Security for now. But you’d better believe that the Dutch are all over this, and whether or not MVRDV’s fantastic Container City project is completed will be a huge factor in how mainstream “container architecture” becomes. My message to the people: DON’T TAKE THIS AWAY FROM US.

If you want to go beyond metal boxes, architecture’s endgame is a combination of genetic algorithms and advanced nanotechnology: buildings that grow themselves. Sometime before that, we’ll have “smart” buildings that can reconfigure themselves based on usage and environmental factors. Until then, I’ll be working on a new type of structure that aggressively envelops existing buildings since they won’t just let me demolish anything I choose.