long saturday

The office is currently involved with a major urban project in France, under the overarching leadership of another major architecture firm, Derzog+Hermuron. Tatiana's part includes three residential buildings, basically housing blocks of about 8 stories.

I've been called in once or twice to help with the model making before big presentations, and yesterday I jumped in as well since David is heading over to Europe tomorrow for a meeting. Anyway, I didn't contribute that much friday, although I stayed until about 1:30 AM. I was doing precedent research, which is basically just looking through Google images. Pinterest is actually a really valuable tool in this regard, although you have to work to avoid the "Magical Castles" and "Cozy nook ideas!" boards when searching for architecture.

Anyway, they brought in PeiWei for dinner (sure, why not?) with an identical menu to the US locations. They forgot to bring my meal, so Paola and Alyessa shared their food with me, which was nice of them.

After helping M finish a model, I called a cab and got home a little before 2. It was actually Moises's last day before his two weeks vacation. It's nice he's able to take it at once.

Actually, the office has felt like it's steadily emptying- since I arrived about four months ago (wow!) three interns have finished their internships and left, one person has left the office voluntarily, and now there are two people on long vacations, plus the head of the office communicating from home and expecting. So the office feels a little more quiet and a little empty.

I had my alarm set for nine this morning since I was expected back in the office by ten. Of course, my traitorous body woke me up at the usual time of 7:28, two minutes before my usual workday alarm. I dressed and went to Reforma an hour early, and grabbed a bite of breakfast at a vegetarian restaurant called Yug. Yug is in the ground floor of a building designed by the famous Mexican architect Mario Pani, incidently. It's a lovely mid-century modern building from the 1950s. The restaurant is comfrotable and not too expensive either. I got basically chiletquilles with scrambled eggs, coffee, orange juice, and two thick slices of wheat toast. A good start to the morning.

At the office I ran into Sergio. He told me that the lasercutting was taking a bunch of time, and two other people were going to be late, so we still had time to go visit the Casa Giraldi by Luis Barragan. Once Sophia showed up, the three of us headed to the metro. Sergio made reservations for the tour in advance. The house was the last of many designed by Barragan in Mexico City. The family who lives there gives tours, but you have to reserve the time and its a little expensive. Actually, at 200 pesos a pop, it's the most expensive tourist attraction I've seen in Mexico City so far.

We ran into another coworker Sonia coming out the metro, and convinced her to tag along, so the four of went to the house in the nighborhood south of Chapultapec park.

The woman who answered the door basically said that she needed a little more time to get everything ready. It turned out that the time was for the son of the family, an architecture student in his early 20s, was the tour guide, and he was clearly hungover and still wiped from friday night.

Anyway, the house was lovely. Barragan has such a humane touch. His houses feel so warm- minimalist, but not empty. The use of color, light, and material make nearly empty spaces feel warm and inviting. We couldn't see all of the rooms (come on, we're paying 200 for this!) but we did get to see the famous yellow hallway leading to the pool. The walls of the indoor pool chamber were a vivid blue, and in the middle of the pool was a wide structural column that had been painted bright red. The contrasting band of red against the field of blue was hypnotic, with a nearly hallucinatory color border. Light is so crucial. There are no windows to the street, but the spaces feel so light, filled with indirect light and bounced color.

When we got back to the office, David had dropped off the freshly laser cut sheets of board and the four of us busied ourselves with separating, sorting, and assembling. Which was no small task. Lots and lots of tiny pieces. We took a break with the company credit card to get panini's from Starbucks, and got back to work.

Our deadline to get the models to David's house nearby was midnight, so he could finish packing and jump on the flight to Europe in the morning. The girls finished their building around 9-10. Our building took a bit longer, especially since we had to attach 300 columns.

Each column was 1/2" long by 1/16" wide. They are slightly larger than long grain rice. We got a system going where Sergio would apply the smallest dab of glue and carefully pass the column to me to stick it on. It was a pretty efficient but boring system and we were finally ready to paint around 10:30.

Protip: typical acrylic based spraypaint is acid to styrofoam. You need to use a water based spraypaint if you have foam elements. Our building model was made of foam separated with chipboard floors.

Can you guess where I really screwed thing up?

The first coat I used the correct spray paint, and then we attached the columns on top of that coat. The second coat, I was spraying on the paint, and I thought, you know, that doesn't look right. I looked at the can, and at the surface of the foam which was taking on the melted marshmallow look and thought
oh SHIT.

At that point we rushed to dab the wet paint from the surface, but the damage had already been done. We stood in the girl's bathroom which doubled as the spray booth and debated how to salvage the model with about an hour before our deadline. I suggested rebuilding the side wall with solid paper board, which was at least the side without any columns. So we quickly went to work cutting and gluing a fix, and then repainted. As we worked, I told Sergio, "you know, I was having such a wonderful day with my buddy, I just wanted to extend our time together." He replied, "yeah, before this, I liked you."

Anyway, we re-sprayed the model, triple checking we had the right can, and I called David to tell him that we were going to be a little late. When I explained what I'd done, his response was the same as mine: "oh shit." Responses to your work you don't want to hear from your boss. But he's a really laid back guy, especially for a German.

We finished the model, wrapped it up in bubble wrap, and attempted to fit into the cardboard box Sonia had made for us. The girl's two buildings were both neatly fit into beautiful and precise boxes, taped along all the seams like it was coming from an Apple Store. Our model didn't fit into the box as much as it wore it like armor. Sergio taped the hell out of it to keep all the pieces together, and it ended up looking like a present wrapped by a first grader, especially next to the girl's boxes.

We shut down the office and literally ran through the light rain in the after midnight hours to David's apartment building, which was about a five minute run away. David was still up and didn't seem too mad, and it was a mixed feeling as I handed over the models.

Actually, from more than five feet away the model looks great. All the tiny columns and the glass and everything look pretty good. In the massive site model in France, I don't think they'll notice. David may fire me when he gets back, once he's seen the model, but in general, defects always look bigger to architects.

Sergio and I walked back towards the office and stopped for some tacos al pastor from a late night vendor's cart. I devoured them and they were delicious. There is nothing that makes tacos taste better than hunger and late night.

I offered to buy Sergio a beer, and we tried to find a bar on nearby Rio Lerma. Saturday night, 12:30pm, no problem right?

Actually, the bar street north of Reforma was in the process of closing. Apparently it's the first stop of the night and all the action shifts south to nearby Zona Rosa, Roma Norte, and Condesa.

The first bar we encountered was Hooters and we walked in to grab a seat at the bar. We were stopped and rerouted back to the hostess stand where the orange shorts clad woman asked us how many were in our party, if we had reservations, blah blah blah. We were finally allowed to go sit at the bar, and mulling over our drink options (dark lager or light lager?) and a different hostess told us they were closing in 15 minutes. Ok. We'll try someplace else. Thanks for letting us know.

In some ways it's so Mexican. In the US, the hostess would tell you if they're about to close, but in Mexico, it's rote process. The hostess would probably ask "how many in your party?" until they start turning off lights.

Same story down the street, so we decided to call it a night. I got a cab from a hotel back to the apartment. When I call a taxi from my phone, there's a set price of 70 pesos to my house. Because its a dialed service, it's more expensive than a regular taxi if the driver takes the same route. The asshole driving my cab decided that the best way to take back was through the congested and narrow bar streets in Condesa to rack up as much time as possible. My total fare was over 80 pesos. Pincha pendejo.

I need to learn how to tell the driver the route to take to not get screwed so bad.

So that was my saturday.