Tea matters (130/365)

[white_hart]

The trouble with architects is that they seem to see buildings as primarily artistic, and not functional. Which is why every time we have a meeting about our new building it ends up overrunning with lots of people asking questions such as:

Where are people supposed to make tea?

Will there be a quiet space for people to sit and eat lunch?

If the kitchen is in the open foyer area, how do we make sure that people don't take other people's food, or personal mugs, or wine that's cooling for receptions? And who is going to tidy things up when (inevitably) people don't put their cups in the dishwasher?

Yes, but really, tea is actually important, and it just feels like it's been shoved in here as an afterthought. And no, saying "but there will be a cafe in the building" doesn't help, because who wants to pay through the nose for a teabag and some indifferently hot water?

And that is why this afternoon's committee meeting overran by 45 minutes and left me incapable of spending the rest of the day doing anything other than filing my email. Which, to be fair, did need doing.

Comments

[jinty]

Oh god yes.

My oldest friend from school is an architect (a prof of architecture & built environment in fact) and this is def a discussion I have had with her! I think she would be up for making the architect work in the building for a year afterwards but even so she has her own blind spots: I went with her to see my old college accommodation (the Florey building on St Clements, totally too warm, expanses of glass, pillars *inside* the rooms for stupid presentation reasons rather than to increase livability). Her and her architect friends swooned over it, me who had lived there hated it.

[white_hart]

Or possibly architects should have to spend a year working in a cutting-edge building as part of their training...

[conuly]

You heard about the architect whose new building melted a car? Apparently, he did it twice.

[caulkhead]

Was one of them the Walkie Talkie in London? (I forget what it's officially called) - if not, that makes three times.

[conuly]

I think one was in London but I don't know that it's that one.

[jinty]

TWICE. Jeez.

[conuly]

It's a supervillain origin story. "THEY LAUGHED AT MY VISION. WELL, WHO'S LAUGHING NOW!?"

[jinty]

It so is!

I'm sure they'd be excited by the chance to do so!

[jinty]

The only doubt I have is whether they would be as shell-shocked as an ordinary person by the end of it, or not. But at least they would hear a lot of real-world opinions on the workability of the building...