CIPHER PROJECT
a novel in-progress by Dustin Siegrist © 2016
I love my job, I love my job, I love my job. Titus tried to reassure himself as his fingers pounded away at the keyboard.
A few more last minute tweaks had to be made in order to make his “early” review deadline. It was basically the same packet of prints that he would use for his client presentation in a couple of hours, but he had to review them with his boss ahead of time. The early review was intended to bring his boss up to speed on the design, and allow him to have comments. It was 11 now. The boss would have comments, Titus would have to change them, and then run around In a panicked state, trying to accomplish two hours of work in 30 minutes. That and get the conference room setup for 20 people; 30 if you counted those joining by phone. It always came down to the last minute, but Titus was begrudgingly used to it.
As usual, Titus Muller had arrived to the office well before dawn that morning, to make the necessary adjustments to the day’s presentation that he’d let “slide” during the past weekend. He liked his weekends. He figured let work happen at work and let home happen at home. He had three children and a wife at home and preferred to be with them during the evenings and weekends, rather than to stay up late working on trivial design adjustments that really didn't’ matter. There would be tweaks made today, several times he knew, and there were always more tweaks, no matter the overtime spent.
Why is Elison such an idiot. How do i deserve the pleasure of fixing all his jackups. This, he thought, was becoming too much of a habit.
He felt like he had three children at work too, sometimes. There was a lot of handholding, it seemed. Showing them how to look both ways before walking across the street, as it were. Shushing them when the grown ups were talking on conference calls. Sometimes they interrupted when important things were being discussed. Other times they blurted out some idiotic question, or conceptual design suggestion that left the Client puzzled. Titus had to cover up the blunders often by adding, “Its a work in progress, we’ll iron the kinks out as we progress.”
But in reality it was a work in progress, people often lost sight of that. Especially his clients. “You’re the Architect! That’s what I hired you for.” they would periodically say. Titus wanted to respond, “Mrs. Client, I could do that if there were no such thing as, say… GRAVITY!” But he thought perhaps that would be a little too sarcastic. Besides, He was sure his structural engineer wanted to say the same about him, too. This was not paper architecture.
Actual size… 11x17… color? Yes… Print! Titus pushed his chair back, stood up and ran to the copier.
After a few minutes he yelled from the copier room. “You have to be freakin’ kidding me!” It could be heard around the office floor, and was a call all too familiar. He ran back to this desk, fluttering sheets of paper on the lay tables in the hallway. “Stupid ‘click to accept print’, Crraap!” He stated aloud to his team as he reached for his mouse. Some of them silently nodded in agreement, others paid no mind. Titus clicked ACCEPT. “Of course I want to print, you idiot,” and then ran he back to the printer to collect his “junk”.
He'd been up since 230am, and had technically worked a full day already. In Titus’s mind, on presentation days it was better to get to the office at 3:30in the morning and work the extra 5 hours at the beginning of the day, than it was to work those five extra hours at night and get to bed at 2am. The result was typically a 13 hour work day once or twice a week when all was said and done. His wife was usually very tired by the time he got home, those days, so it was his turn to help with the kids at night. She had a full time business at home, and three kids to take care of. She was busy, too. Maybe more so than him, he sometimes thought. She was was an amazingly talented lady, and quite a catch.
His children all went to bed between seven and eight in the evening, and he had his normal “chores” to do before his own bedtime. While his wife took a mental break he’d put up the clean dishes, put the dirty dishes into the washer, wipe all the smears of dirt and jelly off the counter, microwave the wet washcloth to steam off the germs, and finally pick up all the toys strewn across the floor; paying close attention to those that were between the path from his bed to the shower in the morning. Any one of those suckers could send him reeling across the hallway in silenced agony. Once upon a time he’d stepped on a lego block and one leg slide out from under him, providing a combination of a sharp jab of pain in his foot, with the tearing sensation of his groin stretching a bit farther than normal. His wife saw the whole event. It was like the ice capades of misfortune.
Oh, the joys of parenthood, in all it’s domains. Titus loved his children, even Ellison the idiot.
After collecting his papers, he collected himself and walked over to Bill’s desk. He pulled out a chair, sat his papers on the desk, and oriented them toward his boss waiting for his chance to review the drawings.
William Laredo, or Bill as everyone called him, was on the phone. This time he was on with The IT department. His computer was acting up again and Bill needed it fixed. Now. The mouse on his computer moved wildly by itself across the screen, as the helpdesk tried to resolve his query from Kansas. His conversational tone flipped readily between the pleading of a lost hungry child and the dictative command of a drill instructor. He had a great way of getting people to help him with things when he needed it.
Titus knew it was this same ability to delegate that made Bill such a great leader in the company. It was the same reason he was the youngest principal in the firm. It was the same reason why clients loved him or hated him. It was the same reason Titus wanted to work for him, good times and bad. It was a quality that helped make for great “capital A” Architecture, the kind that gets in magazines.
Bill hung up the phone, and let the IT assistant continue to problem solve the situation from afar. . He turned to Titus and greeted him with a good morning, as he squared the already squared stack of papers, and grabbed his red felt tip. He perused the packet slowly and methodically, looking at every detail, and word. Titus knew something would be caught, as usual, but he braced himself anyway. The first couple pages were always fine, the Title Page and Location Map. They’d been the same for a long time, and didn’t need much updating. They almost seemed pointless to have, as they were never really part of the presentation. Bill’s only markups were small red dots left by his tap of the pen, a visual signal of “Yea, i read that”.
Bill continued through to the first plan of the parking garage. “Is this ramp slope correct?” It showed one percent slope--one foot of rise over one hundred feet of run.
“Yes, I’ve checked all the ramps.”
Bill pulled out his scale to verify the length of the run. “And you have the head clearance to get under the landing above?”
“Yes.”
“The level above is at…?”
“Plus or minus 465”
“How can you make that with one percent?”
“At the mid-landing we have a jump ramp at ten percent that helps us maintain the minimum slope along the parking aisles.” Titus pointed to one end of the two lane ramp.
Bill nodded.
“Make sure you verify the handicap space count and transition path to the elevators”
Titus nodded. He’d iron out the wrinkles as he proceeded.
“Pocket this door. I don’t want to see it from the Hallway.”
“Will do.”
Bill quickly flipped through the next twenty pages, marking through words here and there. Titus felt some anxiety each time the pen hit paper. These early reviews were always a crap shoot.
“Is there anything else that i need to be aware of?”, Bill asked.
“No, i’ve tried to address all her email comments, and the comments from last meeting. I’ve also included all the visuals from our conference call last Thursday, so we can bring the rest of Ms. Telling’s team up to speed on the design.” Titus flipped to the back of the book and pointed with this pen to a series of elevations comparing various balcony studies on a building facade. Bill acknowledged, flipping through the options labeled A, B.1,B.2, and C. There were only minor differences in detail for each option, but enough to make a difference to a designer. Ms Telling asked to see two of them in her email, and Bill wanted to show two more that he felt weren't so “ludicrously hideous”.
“Have we recieved any other emails from her?”
“Just the one this morning.”
“I haven’t read it yet.”
Titus turned his print of the email around toward Bill. “It’s basically saying she likes Option B.1, but wants to know how many square feet it adds to the sellable area across the building, what the efficiencies are, and what it will cost. I’ve already run the tabulations and reached out to Vance Construction on pricing.”
“Where are we at on the efficiency?”
“77% across a single floor, and 65% building wide”
Bill took out his calculator. “What’s our Gross area per floor plate?”
“9,500 Square feet. The typical floor plate is 7,315 net sellable. That’s with the new B.1 balcony configuration.”
“Ok.” Bill confirmed the numbers.
“We added 25 square feet of interior space on option B.1 for each unit, which was a delta of 50 square feet per floor. 1,250 square feet across the tower.”
“That will make her happy.”
“Yea. She was saying about 1.5 million in added revenue. Geez…”
Bill began, “Did you reach out to the lighting team about getting a temporary fixture we can place in the mockup?”
Titus looked on with a blank face. He didn't know that the light was so critical.
“I asked you to do it two weeks ago,” Bill said in his drill sergeant tone.
“Yea. I’ve emailed him twice and no response.”
“We’ve got to have it today! Call him,right now!”
“Ok, I’ll call him, again.”
“Tell him It’s vital to have in our mockup, today. We’ve got to sell the idea. I can’t do it without the lights.”
“Got it. Understood.”
Bill continued looking at the printed email, highlighting important points with blue lines from his pen. Nothing else jumped out at him, and Titus got up to go back to his desk, relieved that the plans didn't get blown up in any way.
“Thanks.” Titus said, walking away.
Bill nodded, and went back to his computer. A cheery digital text note on his screen read, “All Done! Please reach out if there is anything else i can assist you with!” He wondered why technology always failed him.
The next hour, Titus rushed to complete the presentation tweaks, and called his lighting guy, impressing the need to have a light delivered in the next 30 minutes. The lighting guy was notorious for being on his own schedule. It was not likely to happen, but Titus felt secure that he could at least say the directive had been made.
With about 10 minutes to spare, Titus undocked his computer and made his way down to the conference room. On his way, he requested the assistance of a few interns to help him prep for the necessities of the meeting. One of them was directed to bring up the presentation packages from the printer room, and they were both asked to bring the mockup pieces into the room when it was time.
The conference room was empty and everything was a perfect shade of whitest white-- really it was called “Chantilly Cloud white” to be specific.
Titus quickly connectected his laptop to the projector cable with one hand, and dialed into the wireless conferencing system with his other. He had everything perfectly in order just a few seconds before the first attendee arrived. He remembered to get everything done today, except for his eating lunch.
The meeting began as normal, with a roll call of sorts. Everyone was unnecessarily present, all 20-30 people. In Titus’s mind, the group was far too oversized for proper decision making. Normally it was about five people providing the majority of content discussion, with an occasional “chirp” provided by someone in the room or on the phone trying to act like they were engaged. Maybe they were engaged, but the chirps were typically inconsequential to the outcome of design direction. Titus felt like he was in this category of people. He had one main job during the meetings. Control. He controlled the presentation on the projector screen with his computer, passed out printed presentations for everyone to take-away, controlled the call-in phone lines from feeding back too much, and took notes--sort of. Bill did the Architalk.
Titus opened up the presentation file and, as normal, quickly clicked past the Title Page and Location Map. He pulled up the first floor plan, so that Bill could walk Ms. Edie Telling and the Telling Group through the design changes.
“Edie, as you’re aware, we’ve update the condo plans per our latest discussions. We’re now at 77% efficiency on a typical floor plate.” Bill smiled at Ms. Telling, who was thumbing through the presentation booklet. “This is a good improvement over our design from two weeks ago...”
Edie interrupted. “Bill, can i stop you right there.”
Bill stared at her a bit stunned by the hijack.
“Titus can you pull up the pool deck.”
He followed as she directed.
Edie continued, “I’ve been sharing our design with a few friends of mine over at the Wilstead Group, John MacKay and David Mulholland.” She looked toward her team members, who acknowledge the obscure reference. “And they’re very concerned with the excessive space we have devoted to the Pool deck and Communal amenities area. They feel it's a bit oversized for our proforma.
“I’ve always had an issue with it, and i’ve asked, i don’t know how many times that we look at how we can reduce square footage. Seventy seven percent is acceptable for a condo tower with our small footprint, but 65% total efficiency is just ridiculous. I just can’t get the numbers to work.” She walked to the projector and stood across from Bill, looking more intently at the plan.
“What if we removed the service corridor from the back of the Common Table Room? Move it back toward the core, and adjust the fitness center wall to align. How much area will that reduce for us? Looks like about 500 square feet.”
Titus drew an area rectangle around the region indicated by Edie’s finger. It read “517 SF”.
“But... Edie.” Bill interjected. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to do that. It eliminates my service connection to the pool deck. Yea, i don’t need it to get service to the common table room, but it doesn’t allow me to gain sufficient access to the fitness center. My door entry to the fitness is now forced to move around the corner, into the prime view path of the pool deck. When people get out of the elevator they’re going to lose their view to the beautiful pool and now be confronted with a bunch of sweaty people on elliptical machines watching CNN, or Fox News.”
Titus chirped, “I believe we've had an option similar to that in the past”.
“Bill. I'm just throwing out a suggestion.”
“Edie, we're trying to align… lobby skin... perimeter edge...”
As if on cue, at this point Titus began to check out mentally. This was one hundred percent typical of how meetings went with with this group. It always seemed to be the same. A suggestion here from Edie. A rebuttal there from Bill as to why we couldn’t do it, or things to “keep in mind”. A counter rebuttal would follow from Edie. Every once in awhile Titus would be asked to zoom in, or change plans, or pull up an option from a month or two ago. A discussion would brew about the previous option, then Edie would blame everyone for not listening to her, and go into a long rant about why the design team failed her somehow. Sometimes conversations would end with Bill lashing out, other times it would be Edie.
It was a real soap opera, but one that Titus had seen countless times before..
Titus kept alert enough to keep notes as much he could, but as normal there really were no directives arrived upon. Typically, he left the five hour long meetings with a few bullet point notes of questions--rather than answers--and a series of plans marked up with colorful boxes and arrows showing how rooms were to be moved around or reduced, or whatever, based on Edie’s latest insight or outside feedback.
She wanted to be the architect, but couldn't draw, or didn't have the time to. Edie had hired Bill, and vicariously Titus, but didn't listen to him anymore. Too many years had gone by. Too many options, and studies had been done. Bill was too familiar to Edie now, so his word no longer stood firm as a voice of authority, despite his years of experience, credentials and accolades. This project had spiraled along for 15 years, so perhaps Bill was still the young greenling to Edie.
Titus wished he had the money to play architect. Titus was just a pen for someone to push.
“Titus, can you bring in the mockup?” Bill woke Titus out of his drifting state.
“Yea, I’ll text Sam to bring it in.”
Titus stood up, walked out the door of the conference room, and disappeared around into the corridor. A few moments later two interns came into the room, each carrying an oversized panel of white material that formed a section of the mockup. The two of them made their way into the middle of one side of the room and stopped, waiting for further direction. Titus followed momentarily from the hallway holding a delicate looking wooden structure. The two interns looked at him enquiring where to position the panels and he directed them to line it up along the wall furthest from the main group, nodding the direction with his head, and then using his foot to point more specifically. The two did as directed.
The meeting used this pause to allow for a short break. A few individuals filtered out of the room to refresh themselves, but those left present in the room remained seated, waiting in interest to see what new delights had just been brought in. Toys of the Architects manufacture. Titus made his way around the crowd of loose chairs in the room, and sat the piece on the table, opposite of Ms.Telling. She jotted down a few furious scribbles and leaned in toward the object, while others in the room gathered around her to take a better look.
It was a beautiful and finely detailed model of an enlarged portion of the building skin, about the size of a doll house. Precision tooling had been used to create the laser sharp linear edges representing the joints between various materials in reality. The lines were perfectly in place and showed an undulating skin system broken at random locations with vision glass, represented by acrylic plates in the model. The facade looked as if a series of waves climbed the structure. Some waves took the form of a gentle roll, others were more peaked with a sharply defined crest. Where balconies emerged from the building, the waves of skin appeared to be frozen in mid-splash, creating smaller waves in refracted directions. Small people, cut from the same wood, were placed behind the glass--acrylic plates--to indicate a sense of scale.
As if on cue, Bill stepped in. “Edie. In front of you is a small scale model showing our concept for the building’s proposed new skin system. We’ve taken a bit of time during the past several weeks to create these scale mockups to help better convey our thoughts on the design intent, and to help you and the team understand the intricate detail of the building design.”
“As you’re aware, our building is sited in one of the most amazing locations in the city. It will be viewable from all across town, and it’s position in the city’s skyline will be unmistakable. Couple that with the neighborhoods claim to some of the finest quality architecture in the world, it’s emphasis on art and design, sustainability, and the fact that it brings quality of life back to the city streets, maintains--demands even-- that this tower be of the highest caliber.”
“As you’re aware the building has been oriented so as to minimize solar exposure to the interiors of the building, creating a more healthy interior environment. At the street level we’ve proposed beautiful shopfronts and green spaces to connect to the public realm, and help add to the sense of place and neighborhood friendliness. But in regards to the green design and sustainability, the skin is where the real features lay.”
Bill walked to the large scale mockup, placed along the wall, and began to point with his finger. ”The wave-like facade forms a series of crests and troughs which create a series of channels, seamlessly flowing to hidden collection points across the tower. These channels--the trough of the waves--capture rain as it falls upon the building and swiftly moves it to a collection room where it can be reused to water the landscape, or flush toilets. The metal panel material is made of a cutting edge new product that actually absorbs pollution from the air, and creates electricity from sunlight!”
Edie sat stone cold, pondering the model representation and description Bill gave.
Bill continued. “But if i may add, another beautiful feature we’ve incorporated into the design.” He nodded to Titus, and they both pulled out their phones.
The lights in the room blinked and then slowly dimmed, until only a little light was left coming from behind a veiled window in the room. Bill and Titus touched a few points on their phones,as the group followed them with their eyes. The LED lights of their phones lit up, and they moved toward the smaller model sliding them simultaneously, as if choreographed, to the foot of its wood base. The LED’s began to define an elegant play of swooping white light across face of the waves. Bill and Titus both moved back from the table as everyone pulled out the phones to take pictures of the scene.
Bill leaned in to Titus’s ear. “Where are the lights for the big mockup?”
“Joel never got back with me.”
“Figures.”
Bill spoke again to the room, “Someone had better send us some of those pictures!”
Everyone remained in the dark for a bit longer, texting images to others on the phone line who chirped up once they had seen the images.
“I’m turning the lights on again!” Titus warned, from the back of the room.
“Well…” Edie began after a moment of adjusting to the sudden glare. “That was quite a nice display. Very beautiful. Thank you Bill and team.”
Bill responded with a smile.
Edie continued, “I think you’ve brought up some very good points about water use, and solar collection. Besides being designed with a distinct look, I think those capabilities could be an additional source of revenue to the tower.” She looked at one of her younger team members, and he began to intensely jot down more for his to-do list.
“So speaking of price, do you have any preliminary estimate for this beautiful system?”
Titus looked at Bill and then answered. “Sure. I do. I was recently able to speak with our pricing team over at Vance Construction. After walking them through the design and showing them some schematic sketches of the conceptual system details, they were able to get us a basic rough order of magnitude pricing on the design. With the system as shown in our wooden model and mockup, we are looking at about One Hundred Fifty dollars per squarefoot.”
“How much?!” Edie replied.
One of her cronies responded, “One fifty per...”
“I heard that! It was rhetorical” she blurted. “Huh, how is it that high? I thought you all were looking at options to bring the cost down? Wasn't the last system 110?”
Bill jumped in. “Edie, the last system was a simple window wall. Elegant in its own way, and fine for a typical classy building, but look at what we have here. This skin is going to set your building apart. There is nothing like it in our market or even the entire nation! It's timeless.”
Edie responded, almost cutting Bill off, “Ok, so you're suggesting we add forty dollars to the cost of every square foot of skin. How many Feet of skin do we have for this system?”
Titus clicked around on his screen for a moment, tabbed in a few numbers on his calculator, and then stated aloud, “One hundred five K.”
"One hundred and five thousand squarefeet!” Edie spat out. “That's over four million dollars! Additional cost! No, no, no, no, no. We can't have that.” She said almost like a question. “This isn't going to work at all”
The room stayed silent, awaiting the coming wrath. Edie sat down clearly confused and shocked. Scribbling notes furiously on her scratch pad. There was no way her team could add another four million dollars to the project budget.
All anyone heard was the rapid scratching of pen on paper.
Bill tried to break the silence. “Edie…”
“No, just stop Bill. Clearly we aren't seeing the same goal here! I hired you because you were a talented architect. I hired you because you had vision, and because I could see you as a partner with our team in creating this building! But there are some very real considerations we have to come to grips with! Not the least of which is money! This site is constrained, it has many complex existing conditions to face and that automatically adds a higher bottom line. But I need your help, Bill. Not your monologue. This is real!”
“Edie, we can easily take a look at this skin again and come back with something more value based.” Bill replied.
“No, Bill.” She got up from her conference chair. “I think we need to look for another architect.” She nodded to her team, and they all began to pick up their papers.
Titus couldn't believe what he was hearing. Neither could Bill.
Mr. Laredo walked to the door to intercept Ms Telling. Deploring her to come talk but she wouldn't have any of it. They walked out in to the Hall.
Titus watched as the room began to clear out, until the only people left were those of the architecture team and design consultants. Everyone looked at each other with stunned faces.
Finally someone mumbled under their breath. “Fine with me. This project should have died a long time ago.”
Titus couldn't help but agree with the statement, although he said nothing of the sort. He had worked on this project for four tedious years, never advancing past basic schematic design. It kept spiraling in circles of redesign.
Well, it looked like the rest of his afternoon was free, now.
Chapter 2 - A mold
Titus sat in his room thinking. Wondering what he wanted to do next. It seemed like he now had all the time in the world, and it all came down to his decision of how to spend it.
He didn’t know if he was tired anymore, or hungry. Though, if he tried he could could have probably slept some, and if he tried he could could probably go for some pizza. In the past few months he had probably gained some weight, as was the norm he’d been told.
Next to him, in the other bed laid a tall, lanky fellow, with greasy multi-colored hair, deep asleep. Probably suffering from sleep deprivation for a recent bender. Of course, for this fellow it was a video game bender. Titus had done an occasional game bender before but it left him feeling achy and pained, like he was hungover or had too much sun exposure. Titus didn’t quite understand the need for video games. He’d always seen them as too much of distraction to be of any real good. But obviously it was the distraction that made them so attractive to some.
His roommate slept. Snoring.
To be continued ...
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