Philip Kerr: Gridiron

Los Angeles Times) , the architect, Ray Richardson, and the chief engineer, David Arnon. No workmen were actually invited, unless you counted Helen Hussey, the site agent, and Warren Aikman, the clerk of works. A Taoist priest had been flown in from Hong Kong at the request of Jenny Bao, the Yu Corporation's feng shui consultant in LA, who was also present. An urbane, effusive little man, Mr Yu greeted his guests with a lefthanded handshake, his right arm having been withered since birth. For those who were meeting him for the first time, it was hard to reconcile his vast wealth (Forbes magazine had estimated his personal fortune at $5 billion) with the knowledge that he was on excellent terms with the Communist leaders in Peking. But Mr Yu was nothing if not pragmatic. After the introductions, it fell to Ray Richardson to introduce the building and the ceremony. The fifty-five-year-old self-styled 'architechnologist' at the microphone would have passed for ten or fifteen years younger. He wore a cream linen suit, a soft blue shirt and a quiet tie with a hand-painted look, all of which might have marked him as a European, most probably an Italian. He was in fact Scottish, but with the kind of accent that demonstrated long exposure to the southern California sun. Those who knew Ray Richardson well said that the accent was the only thing about him that showed any evidence of warmth. He unfolded several typewritten sheets, smiled experimentally and, finding the noonday sun too strong for his cool grey eyes, produced a pair of tortoiseshell Ray-bans and drew up the shades on his tiny soul.

'YK, Senator Schwarz, Congressman Kelly, Mr Deputy Mayor, ladies and gentlemen: the history of architecture is not, as you might think, an aesthetic one, but a technical one.'

Mitchell Bryan, sitting with the rest of the design and construction team, groaned inwardly as he realized he would have to endure yet another of his senior partner's breast-beating speeches. He looked at David Arnon and flickered his eyelids meaningfully, having first checked that Richardson's Native American wife Joan could not observe this small act of resistance. Mitch need hardly have bothered. Joan was watching Richardson with the rapt, close attention normally reserved for a religious figure. David Arnon stifled a yawn and settled back in his chair, trying to imagine what Arlene Sheridan, seated on the next table, would look like without her clothes.

'The history of all hitherto existing architecture is the history of technological advance. For example: the Roman invention of cement made possible the construction of the dome of the Pantheon — the widest dome in the world until the nineteenth century. In Joseph Paxton's day, the new structural possibilities of iron, and advances in plate-glass manufacture, made it possible to build the Crystal Palace in London, in 1851. Thirty years later, Siemen's invention of the electric elevator enabled the construction of the first multi-storey structure in turn-of-the-century Chicago. Exactly a century after that, architecture was drawing on developments that had been made in the aeronautics industry: buildings that made the most of new materials to reduce their mass, like Norman Foster's Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.

'Ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you that the modern architectural scene presents us with the greatest adventure of all: architecture that uses the advanced technology of space exploration and the computer age. The building as a machine in which invisible micro- and nanotechnology have replaced industrial mechanical systems. A building that is more like a robot than a shelter. A structure with its own electronic nervous system that is every bit as responsive as the muscles flexing in the body of an Olympic athlete.

'No doubt there are some of you present here today who will have already heard of so-called smart or intelligent buildings. The concept of the intelligent building has been around for a while and yet there remains little consensus of what makes a building intelligent. For me the distinguishing feature of the truly integrated intelligent building is that all the computer systems within the building, including those associated with the building's operations and those related to the building user's business, are connected together to form a single network using a databus, a screened cable containing a twisted pair of conductors. Like those minibuses that travel in a loop around the downtown area. Using the data-bus a central computer sends signals to various electronic subsystems — security, data, energy — in the form of the time-multiplexed, high frequency, 24-volt digital data commands.

'So, for instance, the central computer will interrogate a variety of linear, point and volumetric sensors within the building, and watch out for a fire. Only if the computer is unable to extinguish the fire itself will it telephone the local fire department and request human assistance.'

For a moment Richardson looked away from his script as a sudden gust of wind carried the voice of Cheng Peng Fei up from the building site below:

'The Yu Corporation supports the fascist government of China!'

'You know,' Richardson grinned, 'just before I got here I was speaking to someone about this building. She asked me if we would demonstrate what it was capable of. I said no, we wouldn't.' He extended his hand towards the sound of the protesters. 'But hey, what do you know? I was wrong. There is a demonstration after all. The only shame is that I can't end this one at the touch of a button.'

Richardson's audience laughed politely.

'As it happens, the most important aspect of this building's intelligence can't be demonstrated so easily. Because what makes this building really smart is not its ability to anticipate the pattern of use so that energy can be expended with the utmost parsimony. Nor is it the computer-controlled base isolators that will enable the structure to withstand earthquakes measuring up to 8.5 on the Richter Scale.

'No, what makes this the smartest building in LA, possibly in the whole United States, ladies and gentlemen, is its inherent ability to cope with not just the demands of today's information technology, but tomorrow's as well.

'When many American companies are already struggling to remain competitive with Europe and the East Asian Pacific Rim countries, it's an uncomfortable fact that there are a great many office buildings in America, some of them built as recently as 1970, that are prematurely obsolete: the cost of bringing them up to date to meet the demand of IT exceeds the cost of tearing them down and starting again.

'I believe that this building represents a new generation of office accommodation, one that will provide our country with the only means of ensuring that we remain competitive tomorrow; the kind of building that will guarantee that this great country is best placed to take full advantage of what President Dole has called the Global Information Infrastructure. Because, make no mistake about this, this is the key to economic growth. Information Infrastructure will be to the US economy of the next ten years what transport infrastructure was to the economy of the mid-twentieth century. Which is why I believe that you will soon be seeing many more buildings like this one.

'Of course, only time will tell whether or not I am right and if the Yu Corporation will continue to be a completely satisfied occupant well into the next century. What is certain is that the world now faces the same kind of challenge that faced Chicago one hundred years ago, when the storage, merchandizing and managerial demands of the railway and steam-power trade required the utilization of the new office technology of telephones and typewriters, and a new kind of building to put them in as land prices soared. The Chicago frame building, or the skyscraper as we know it better today, produced a new kind of city. In the same way that between 1900 and 1920 Manhattan transformed itself into the landscape of mesas and ziggurats with which we are familiar today, I believe that we now stand on the threshold of an urban metamorphosis wherein our cities become intelligent participants in the whole global economic process.

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