GRIZZLY PEAR
The kids were playing and laughing on the swings and the slides at the playground.
Honestly, I think they were having just as much fun as if they were at an amusement park.
Going on vacation is not cheap, but it is easy.
The harder endeavor is finding such joy at home, day to day.
It has been at least two decades since visiting Disneyland. I came before there even was a “California Adventure”, when this extravaganza was just an asphalt sea of parking.
With two decades of architecture under my belt, the biggest change is the understanding that there were humans behind every bit of this manufactured world. Nothing is to be taken for granted, neither the initial execution nor the continued maintenance of this idyllic universe.
When you come as a kid, it just is. When you come as an architect, it became.
Yes, you notice the seams and the people behind the magick, but it is all the more impressive this way.
We went for three days.
It really is all that.
The last time I had been in an amusement park was eighteen years ago at Six Flags, staffed with sullen teenagers manning the rides on a sultry summer afternoon.
This was obviously not that.
This was a bespoke experience to create the happiest place on earth. The theming, the architecture, the rides, the “cast”…not the prices…but just about everything else.
It shows how money really starts to matter less to the audience once you completely stack rest of the deck in your favor.
And yes, our girl was not happy about coming home to boring old Las Vegas.
I was outside an old industrial park and I noticed a chalk line on the slab outside one of the storefront doors.
It was about an inch back from face of the finish so I suspect it was the line of the studs when they did a refresh of the place. That would make this chalk line maybe two decades old?
I’m certain it survived over the years because this tenant had two doors, and this door was typically locked and unused. But still, that’s a long time for a chalk line to hang around!
Sometimes our most insignificant marks last much longer than we could imagine.
Coming back from Overton, I took a slightly longer route via the Lake Mead Recreation area. It was an absolutely gorgeous drive.
So this weekend we trundled up in the van and went back to visit.
It did not disappoint, though partly because it is run down, with buildings from the late 70’s we’re heading towards a half century now, and the falling water levels certainly add to the air of disuse.
I’ve always had a fondness for lonely roads and straggly architecture and this got both in spades.
When you find one in this world, hang on to them tightly. There is a sacredness to such places.
Time flows slowly but inexorably, inevitably such a place will transform and change, and it may no longer be the right place for you.
Savor the moment, and count yourself fortunate.
I was about half an hour early to a meeting so I ended up grabbing a coffee at the campus cafe and surveyed the setting.
It was good to contemplate the users of my building. I needed to descend from the fog of bureaucracy and see the young women and men who will be using this building.
The people in that shop will be graduated by the time my building opens up, but the next round of future teachers of Clark County will be following right behind them.
And not long after, my daughter and then my son will be following behind them.
My two little ones are closer in age to these young folks than I am.
How time has flown.
The Clark County park system has program where one can purchase a memorial plaque at a tree.
My girl has always been intrigued with these plaques, and she likes having them read out to her.
To her it’s all so abstract, but when I get something near 1979, my eyes open up.
They are reminders that life is short, and it runs quick.
Go make the most of this time, it’s what we got. Nothing more is promised.
In the fall of 2000, I took a landscape studio and was introduced to the classical form of the labyrinth. Unlike modern maze puzzles, the labyrinth is a continuous route that leads you to the center and walking this wound up path has been used by monks as a form of meditation. It is an intriguing form, which is why it has survived through history.
Fast forward seventeen years later and I spent a good chunk of last autumn working on an RV park along the Colorado River out in Laughlin. The project was sited on a property that was previously slated to be condominiums with several structures already installed on site. Like that ill fated project, this one fell through and was shelved late in construction documents.
This past Friday, we took a day trip out to Laughlin. Unfortunately the casino strip is unremarkable, aside from the ability to buy a lotto ticket across the river.
However I was finally able to conduct a belated site visit (finally saying hello to an online friend in person). Plus we found a little grassroots land art feature, the Laughlin Labyrinths. So I finally had a chance to walk a few labyrinths in person with our daughter.
In both cases, it was good to take these places out of the minds eye and live them in the fullness of reality.
The other day I went to a meeting at a consultant’s office. As I entered the main entry, my eye caught the name of the complex, “Rent your office at the Atrium!”
I saw the fire stairs and rushed up the usual utilitarian set of concrete steps with metal pipe rail. But when I pushed open the door to the second floor…there was indeed an open courtyard with a big rock landscape feature with stream in the middle!
So yes, it was exactly as advertised, this is an open impressive atrium office building. In suburbia, you’re definitely fed a whole lot of bull with the building names, but once in a blue moon a developer will give you exactly what they promised.