Curved Architecture Quotes

Hoover Dam," Thalia said. "It's huge." We stood at the river's edge, looking up at a curve of concrete that loomed between the cliffs. People were walking along the top of the dam. They were so tiny they looked like fleas. The naiads had left with a lot of grumbling—not in words I could understand, but it was obvious they hated this dam blocking up their nice river. Our canoes floated back downstream, swirling in the wake from the dam's discharge vents. "Seven hundred feet tall," I said. "Built in the 1930s." "Five million cubic acres of water," Thalia said. Graver sighed. "Largest construction project in the United States." Zoe stared at us. "How do you know all that?" "Annabeth," I said. "She liked architecture." "She was nuts about monuments," Thalia said. "Spouted facts all the time." Grover sniffled. "So annoying." "I wish she were here," I said.

The yard was a little centre of regeneration. Here, with keen edges and smooth curves, were forms in the exact likeness of those he had seen abraded and time-eaten on the walls. These were the ideas in modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry. Even some of those antiques might have been called prose when they were new. They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men.

I'm trained as an architect; writing is like architecture. In buildings, there are design motifs that occur again and again, that repeat -- patterns, curves. These motifs help us feel comfortable in a physical space. And the same works in writing, I've found. For me, the way words, punctuation and paragraphs fall on the page is important as well -- the graphic design of the language. That was why the words and thoughts of Estha and Rahel, the twins, were so playful on the page ... I was being creative with their design. Words were broken apart, and then sometimes fused together. "Later" became "Lay. Ter." "An owl" became "A Nowl." "Sour metal smell" became "sourmetal smell." Repetition I love, and used because it made me feel safe. Repeated words and phrases have a rocking feeling, like a lullaby. They help take away the shock of the plot -- death, lives destroyed or the horror of the settings -- a crazy, chaotic, emotional house, the sinister movie theater.

Since the late 1980s, woodworkers and cabinet makers have used vacuum press systems to build curved furniture and architectural components of all sizes and shapes—and, in many cases, to laminate inexpensive materials with exotic veneers. The method was born out of the aircraft manufacturing industry

Why, then, do you go there at such a season?" my editor asked me once, sitting in a Chinese restaurant in New York, with his gay English charges. "Yes, why do you ?" they echoed their prospective benefactor. "What is it like there in winter ?" I thought of telling them about acqua alta; about the various shades of gray in the window as one sits for breakfast in one's hotel, enveloped by silence and the mealy morning pall of newlyweds' faces; about pigeons accentuating every curve and cornice of the local Baroque in their dormant affinity for architecture; about a lonely monument to Francesco Querini and his two huskies carved out of Istrian stone, similar, I think, in its hue, to what he saw last, dying, on his ill-fated journey to the North Pole, now listening to the Giardini's rustle of evergreens in the company of Wagner and Carducci; about a brave sparrow perching on the bobbing blade of a gondola against the backdrop of a sirocco-roiled damp infinity. No, I thought, looking at their effete but eager faces; no, they won't do. "Well, I said, "it's like Greta Garbo swimming.

In the 1970s, while researching in the Library of Congress, I found an obscure history of religious architecture that assumed a fact as if it were common knowledge: the traditional design of most patriarchal buildings of worship imitates the female body. Thus, there is an outer and inner entrance, labia majora and labia minora; a central vaginal aisle toward the altar; two curved ovarian structures on either side; and then in the sacred center, the altar or womb, where the miracle takes place - where males gives birth. Though this comparison was new to to me, it struck home like a rock down a well. Of course, I thought. The central ceremony of patriarchal religions is one in which men take over the yoni-power of creation by giving birth symbolically. No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin - because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life. No wonder the male priesthood tries to keep women away from the altar, just as women are kept away from control of our own powers of reproduction. Symbolic or real, it's all devoted to controlling the power that resides in the female body.

In the moment all is dear to me, dear that in this logic there is no redemption, the city itself being the highest form of madness and each and every part, organic or inorganic, an expression of this same madness. I feel absurdly and humbly great, not as megalomaniac, but as human spore, as the dead sponge of life swollen to saturation. I no longer look into the eyes of the woman I hold in my arms but I swim through, head and arms and legs, and I see that behind the sockets of the eyes there is a region unexplored, the world of futurity, and here there is no logic whatever, just the still germination of events unbroken by night and day, by yesterday and tomorrow. The eye, accustomed to concentration on points in space, now concentrates on points in time; the eye sees forward and backward at will. The eye which was the I of the self no longer exists; this selfless eye neither reveals nor illuminates. It travels along the line of the horizon, a ceaseless, uninformed voyager. Trying to retain the lost body I grew in logic as the city, a point digit in the anatomy of perfection. I grew beyond my own death, spiritually bright and hard. I was divided into endless yesterdays, endless tomorrows, resting only on the cusp of the event, a wall with many windows, but the house gone. I must shatter the walls and windows, the last shell of the lost body, if I am to rejoin the present. That is why I no longer look into the eyes or through the eyes, but by the legerdemain of will swim through the eyes, head and arms and legs to explore the curve of vision. I see around myself as the mother who bore me once saw round the comers of time. I have broken the wall created by birth and the line of voyage is round and unbroken, even as the navel. No form, no image, no architecture, only concentric flights of sheer madness. I am the arrow of the dream's substantiality. I verify by flight. I nullify by dropping to earth.

The Sentinels lead the way through the maze of passages in the upper levels of the palace. Like the Spiral Garden, the architecture is all curves of stone, glass, and metal, slowly turning downward. Diamondglass is around every corner, showing breathtaking views of the marketplace, the river valley, and the woods beyond. From this height, I can see hills I didn't know existed rising in the distance, silhouetted against the setting sun.

to, and some like the engineer never do get comfortable with them and use the less garish auditory side-doors; and the abundant sulcus-fissures and gyrus-bulges of the slick latex roof make rain-drainage complex and footing chancy at best, so there’s not a whole lot of recreational strolling up here, although a kind of safety-balcony of skull-colored polybutylene resin, which curves around the midbrain from the inferior frontal sulcus to the parietooccipital sulcus—a halo-ish ring at the level of like eaves, demanded by the Cambridge Fire Dept. over the heated pro-mimetic protests of topological Rickeyites over in the Architecture Dept. (which the M.I.T. administration, trying to placate Rickeyites and C.F.D. Fire Marshal both, had had the pre-molded resin injected with dyes to render it the distinctively icky brown-shot off-white of living skull, so that the balcony resembles at once corporeal bone and numinous aura)—which balcony means that

wheelchair-accessible front ramp, take a bit of getting used to, and some like the engineer never do get comfortable with them and use the less garish auditory side-doors; and the abundant sulcus-fissures and gyrus-bulges of the slick latex roof make rain-drainage complex and footing chancy at best, so there’s not a whole lot of recreational strolling up here, although a kind of safety-balcony of skull-colored polybutylene resin, which curves around the midbrain from the inferior frontal sulcus to the parietooccipital sulcus—a halo-ish ring at the level of like eaves, demanded by the Cambridge Fire Dept. over the heated pro-mimetic protests of topological Rickeyites over in the Architecture Dept. (which the M.I.T. administration, trying to placate Rickeyites and C.F.D. Fire Marshal both, had had the pre-molded resin injected with dyes to render it the distinctively icky brown-shot off-white of living skull, so that the balcony resembles at once corporeal bone and

The exterior of the building was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly to have a sweeping curve, but this meant that all the reflective glass windows accidentally became a massive concave mirror—a kind of giant lens in the sky able to focus sunlight on a tiny area. It’s not often sunny in London, but when a sun-filled day in summer 2013 lined up with the recently completed windows, a death heat-ray swept across London. OK, it wasn’t that bad. But it was producing temperatures of nearly 200°F

Why, then, do you go there at such a season?" my editor asked me once, sitting in a Chinese restaurant in New York, with his gay English charges. "Yes, why do you ?" they echoed their prospective benefactor. "What is it like there in winter ?" I thought of telling them about acqua alta; about the various shades of gray in the window as one sits for breakfast in one's hotel, enveloped by silence and the mealy morning pall of newlyweds' faces; about pigeons accentuating every curve and cornice of the local Baroque in their dormant affinity for architecture; about a lonely monument to Francesco Querini and his two huskies carved out of Istrian stone, similar, I think, in its hue, to what he saw last, dying, on his ill-fated journey to the North Pole, now listening to the Giardini's rustle of evergreens in the company of Wagner and Carducci; about a brave sparrow perching on the bobbing blade of a gondola against the backdrop of a sirocco-roiled damp infinity. No, I thought, looking at their effete but eager faces; no, they won't do. "We;;, I said, "it's like Greta Garbo swimming.

With so much knowledge written down and disseminated and so many ardent workers and eager patrons conspiring to produce the new, it was inevitable that technique and style should gradually turn from successful trial and error to foolproof recipe. The close study of antique remains, especially in architecture, turned these sources of inspiration into models to copy. The result was frigidity—or at best cool elegance. It is a cultural generality that going back to the past is most fruitful at the beginning, when the Idea and not the technique is the point of interest. As knowledge grows more exact, originality grows less; perfection increases as inspiration decreases. In painting, this downward curve of artistic intensity is called by the sug- gestive name of Mannerism. It is applicable at more than one moment in the history of the arts. The Mannerist is not to be despised, even though his high competence is secondhand, learned from others instead of worked out for himself. His art need not lack individual character, and to some connoisseurs it gives the pleasure of virtuosity, the exercise of power on demand, but for the critic it poses an enigma: why should the pleasure be greater when the power is in the making rather than on tap? There may be no answer, but a useful corollary is that perfection is not a necessary characteristic of the greatest art.

The billboards ruin everything. The historical flavor, the old-time architecture, even the beauty of the wooded hillside—all are sacrificed. Pole-lines and wires may be accepted, like fences, as part of the basic American landscape. They do their work without striving to be conspicuous, and often their not-ungraceful curves add a touch of interest, an intricacy of pattern, even some beauty. Billboards are different. . . . billboards blast themselves into the viewer's consciousness. . . . some of the smaller billboards—those advertising local hotels, service-stations, or small industries—seem to have a certain rooting in the soil, and are often modest and comparatively harmonious to the setting. The large billboards—owned by special companies, usually advertising the products of mass-production—are always placed in the most conspicuous spots, and have designs and colors carefully chosen to clash with the background. One feels a difference between a home-produced: "Stop at Joe's Service Station for Gas—Two Miles," or "The Liberty Café—Short Orders at All Hours—Give Us a Try!" and some gigantic rectangle advertising tires or beer. Large billboards are now springing up along U. S. 40 even in the vastnesses of the Nevada sagebrush country. They are an abomination! Personally, I try to buy as little as possible of anything that is so advertised.

I will invest my heart's desire and the work of my hands in things that will outlive me. Although it grieves me that houses are burning, I have fallen in love with freedom regardless, and the entitlement of a woman to get a move on, equipped with boots that fit and opinions that might matter. The treasures I carry closest to my heart are things I can't own: the curve of a five-year-old's forehead in profile, and the vulnerable expectation in the hand that reaches for mine as we cross the street. The wake-up call of birds in a forest. The intensity of the light fifteen minutes before the end of day; the color wash of a sunset on mountains; the ripe sphere of that same sun hanging low in a dusty sky in a breathtaking photograph from Afghanistan. In my darkest times I have to walk, sometimes alone, in some green place. Other people must share this ritual. For some I suppose it must be the path through a particular set of city streets, a comforting architecture; for me it's the need to stare at water until my mind comes to rest on nothing at all. Then I can go home. I can clear the brush from a neglected part of the garden, working slowly until it comes to me that here is one small place I can make right for my family. I can plant something as an act of faith in time itself, a vow that we will, sure enough, have a fall and a winter this year, to be followed again by spring. This is not an end in itself, but a beginning. I work until my mind can run a little further on its tether, tugging at this central pole of my sadness, forgetting it for a minute or two while pondering a school meeting next week, the watershed conservation project our neighborhood has undertaken, the farmer's market it organized last year: the good that becomes possible when a small group of thoughtful citizens commit themselves to it...Small change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.

He looked immediately up and stared at them, his luscious lips curving in a corner. Chelsea’s eyes fluttered to the high ceiling as if she were studying its architecture. I’m a complete and utter idiot.

Birds and airfish, singly and in vast flocks that dimmed the sun, filled the spaces between the ocean and the clouds, lazily trailing one long wing across the brief smooth curvings between the waves before disappearing amongst the long rolling troughs again, or weaving columnar patterns like grey, fractal shadows against the soaring architecture of cloud.

The Capehart housing of Freedom Bay, Ben thought, as he curved down Iwo Jima Boulevard, had all the architectural complexity and stylistic flamboyance of an oyster bed.

I withdraw once again in the contemplation of the desert and its sumptuous architecture. How is it possible to have such perfect curves with such pure lines, looking as if drawn for infinity but made of... sand, sculpted by the wind? The little wind furrows are almost the perfect mirror image of those left by the pulses of the sea in the sand of the estuaries and on the beaches.

Why, of all possible worlds, this colossal and apparently unnecessary multitude of galaxies in a mysteriously curved space-time continuum, these myriads of differing tube-species playing frantic games of one-upmanship, these numberless ways of “doing it” from the elegant architecture of the snow crystal or the diatom to the startling magnificence of the lyrebird or the peacock?

That was my favorite thing about Paris: it was well lived. The architecture spoke of the life it had seen through its curves and textures.

New becomes stale and old becomes fresh. The impractical, ageing estate long ago left behind to Singapore's pioneers and their homemade tofu stalls takes on a certain irreverence and originality; an anarchic streak even. It goes against the architectural grain. It stands out in a crowd, a rebel with curves. The reclusive behaviour only adds to the appeal. So the old place becomes "hip".

All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd. It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odd - uncanny and highly improbable. G. K. Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at a gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don’t. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things. Why, of all possible worlds, this colossal and apparently unnecessary multitude of galaxies in a mysteriously curved space-time continuum, these myriads of differing [...] species playing frantic games of one-upmanship, these numberless ways of “doing it” from the elegant architecture of the snow crystal or the diatom to the startling magnificence of the lyrebird or the peacock?

MOST CITIES ARE designed on grids that fill them with hard angles. Not Amsterdam, which has a softness about it imparted by the watery curves of the 16th-century canals that fan out through the city. Though its gabled canal houses and narrow medieval streets give it an undeniable old-world charm, Amsterdam’s thoroughly contemporary takes on arts, architecture and design show that it has modernity in a firm embrace. It’s a city that invites wandering, with a tram system and a plenitude of bicycles (about as many as there are residents) that make navigating as fun as it is easy. Thanks to the locals, most of whom speak English, you’ll feel instantly welcome and will be spared the indignity of trying to pronounce Dutch (don’t even try). Spend as much time as possible on foot, the better to enjoy the city’s theatrical quality: The huge, unshaded windows of the canal homes allow you to peer right in, testimony to the Dutch ethos of having nothing to hide.

The basic principles of evolutionary biology would seem to dictate that any natural phenomenon as prominent in our lives as our experience of consciousness must necessarily have some discernible and quantifiable effect in order for it to exist, and to persist, in nature at all. It must, in other words, confer some selective advantage. And that raises an obvious question: What possible selective advantage could consciousness offer if it is only a functionless phantasm? How could consciousness ever have evolved in the first place if, in and of itself, it does nothing? Why, in short, did nature bother to produce beings capable of self-awareness and subjective inner experience? True, evolutionary biologists can trot out many examples of traits that have been carried along on the river of evolution although not specifically selected for (the evolutionary biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin called such traits spandrels, the architectural term for the elements between the exterior curve of an arch and the right angle of the walls around it, which were not intentionally built but were instead formed by two architectural traits that were "selected for"). But consciousness seems like an awfully prominent trait not to have been the target of some selection pressure. As James put it, "The conclusion that [consciousness] is useful is...quite justifiable. But if it is useful, it must be so through its causal efficaciousness.

the Doric order the column has no separate base, but rises direct from the top step of the platform on which the building it belongs to stands. It is of massive form and has what is known as an entasis or slightly convex surface, it is generally fluted, that is to say, cut into parallel perpendicular channels, several rings called annulets connecting it with the capital, which consists of an echinus or rounded moulding and an abacus or unrounded slab resting on the echinus. The Doric entablature is equally simple, the architrave being perfectly plain, whilst the frieze is adorned with triglyphs or three upright projections with grooves between them, set at equal distances from each other, the spaces separating them, known as metopes, being as a rule enriched with fine sculptures of figure subjects. The frieze is connected with the cornice by narrow bands called mutules resting on the triglyphs and metopes, and the cornice itself has a plain lower band known as the corona, surmounted by more or less decorated courses of stone or marble. The Ionic and Corinthian orders are alike characterised by lightness and grace rather than massiveness and simplicity. In both, the columns, instead of rising direct from the platform, have a complex base consisting of a number of circular mouldings above another, the fluted shafts are comparatively slim and tapering, and the channels in them are divided by spaces called fillets. In the Ionic order the flat abacus of the Doric capital is replaced by two coiled volutes projecting beyond the echinus on either side, and the horizontal portion between the volutes is surmounted by finely carved leaf mouldings. The Corinthian order is specially distinguished by the ornate decoration of the capitals, that represent calices of flowers and leaves, chiefly those of the acanthus, arranged so as to point upwards and curve outwards in much the same style as they do in nature. The architrave in both the Ionic and the Corinthian orders consists of plain slabs, but the frieze—which is not divided as in Doric buildings into triglyphs and metopes—is in nearly every case enriched with a series of beautiful figure

After traversing the open plain, the road led through a grove of young ebony trees, where guinea-fowls and a hartebeest were seen; it then wound, with all the characteristic eccentric curves of a goat-path, up and down a succession of land-waves crested by the dark green foliage of the mango, and the scantier and lighter-coloured leaves of the enormous calabash. The depressions were filled with jungle of more or less density, while here and there opened glades, shadowed even during noon by thin groves of towering trees. At our approach fled in terror flocks of green pigeons, jays, ibis, turtledoves, golden pheasants, quails and moorhens, with crows and hawks, while now and then a solitary pelican winged its way to the distance. Nor was this enlivening prospect without its pairs of antelope, and monkeys which hopped away like Australian kangaroos; these latter were of good size, with round bullet heads, white breasts, and long tails tufted at the end. We arrived at Kikoka by 5 P.M., having loaded and unloaded our pack animals four times, crossing one deep puddle, a mud sluice, and a river, and performed a journey of eleven miles. The settlement of Kikoka is a collection of straw huts; not built after any architectural style, but after a bastard form, invented by indolent settlers from the Mrima and Zanzibar for the purpose of excluding as much sunshine as possible from the eaves and interior. A sluice and some wells provide them with water, which though sweet is not particularly wholesome or appetizing, owing to the large quantities of decayed matter which is washed into it by the rains, and is then left to corrupt in it. A

The view from my window was a symmetrical sea of undulating curves. The Nightborn drew their architectural inspiration from the sky and moon—metal-capped domes, polished granite, silver that cradled indigo stained glass. From up here, the moonlight and rain caressed an expanse of platinum.

The City was beautiful, it really was. A towering architectural celebration of curves and polish and colored light, laced with the connective threads of elevated rail lines and smooth footpaths, flocked with leaves that spilled lushly from every balcony and center divider, each inhaled breath perfumed with cooking spice, fresh nectar, laundry drying in the pristine air.

Paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin wrote a paper in 1979 claiming that some of our skills and abilities might be like spandrels—the architectural negative spaces above the curve of the arches of buildings—details that weren’t originally designed as autonomous entities, but that came into being as a result of other, more practical elements around them. The linguist Noam Chomsky proposed that language itself might be an evolutionary spandrel—that the ability to form sentences might not have evolved directly but might be the by-product of some other, more pragmatic evolutionary development. In this view, many of the arts got a free ride along with the development of other, more prosaic qualities and cognitive abilities.

Yet Hadrian’s architects were not entirely successful, for a series of cracks are visible along the inside of the dome, running like lightning strokes down the ceiling to the springing line, the point where the dome begins to curve inward. These fractures are the result of the hoop stress that causes the dome to spread at its haunches, stretching the fabric horizontally around the circumference. Filippo could have seen a similar pattern of radial cracks around the base of the semidome in the Baths of Trajan, and indeed such cracks have been an all too common feature of masonry domes. Containment of this horizontal stress—one that it appears not even a concrete wall 23 feet thick could neutralize—was therefore of paramount importance in constructing a stable cupola. For all their ingenuity, not even the Romans, it seemed, could provide the solution to the challenge laid down by Neri di Fioravanti and his committee.

Termites are even more extraordinary in the way they seem to accumulate intelligence as they gather together. Two or three termites in a chamber will begin to pick up pellets and move them from place to place, but nothing comes of it; nothing is built. As more join in, they seem to reach a critical mass, a quorum, and the thinking begins. They place pellets atop pellets, then throw up columns and beautiful, curving, symmetrical arches, and the crystalline architecture of vaulted chambers is created. It is not known how they communicate with each other, how the chains of termites building one column know when to turn toward the crew on the adjacent column, or how, when the time comes, they manage the flawless joining of the arches. The stimuli that set them off at the outset, building collectively instead of shifting things about, may be pheromones released when they reach committee size. They react as if alarmed. They become agitated, excited, and then they begin working, like artists.

Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp can be seen as a crab, a duck, a hand, a hat and much else. Utzon’s Sydney Opera House can be seen as shells, a flower, or sails. The soaring curves of Saarinen’s TWA terminal in New York symbolise flight. The Archigram building concepts of the 1960s were designed as pods. Significantly, all these buildings were curvilinear. Curves ‘carry’ ideas from the natural world. Rectilinearity [stet] is a metaphor for intellectualism and the works of man. Renaissance architecture was a metaphor for reason and delight, restoring order after the chaos of the Middle Ages. Thoreau’s house, by Walden Pond, was a New Englander’s protest against materialism. Hundertwasser’s Viennese architecture is a metaphor for the reassertion of nature and emotion, after the brutalism of the twentieth century.

the design of many patriarchal religious buildings resembles the body of a woman. Think about it: there is an outer and inner entrance (labia majora, labia minora) with a vestibule between (an anatomical as well as architectural term) and a vaginal aisle up the center of the church to the altar (the womb) with two curved (ovarian) structures on either side. The altar or womb is where all-male priests confer everlasting life—and who can prove that they don’t?

The Primary Act. As they entered the cinema, Dr Nathan confided to Captain Webster, ‘Talbert has accepted in absolute terms the logic of the sexual union. For him all junctions, whether of our own soft biologies or the hard geometries of these walls and ceilings, are equivalent to one another. What Talbert is searching for is the primary act of intercourse, the first apposition of the dimensions of time and space. In the multiplied body of the film actress - one of the few valid landscapes of our age - he finds what seems to be a neutral ground. For the most part the phenomenology of the world is a nightmarish excrescence. Our bodies, for example, are for him monstrous extensions of puffy tissue he can barely tolerate. The inventory of the young woman is in reality a death kit.’ Webster watched the images of the young woman on the screen, sections of her body intercut with pieces of modern architecture. All these buildings. What did Talbert want to do - sodomize the Festival Hall? Pressure Points. Koester ran towards the road as the helicopter roared overhead, its fans churning up a storm of pine needles and cigarette cartons. He shouted at Catherine Austin, who was squatting on the nylon blanket, steering her body stocking around her waist. Two hundred yards beyond the pines was the perimeter fence. She followed Koester along the verge, the pressure of his hands and loins still marking her body. These zones formed an inventory as sterile as the items in Talbert’s kit. With a smile she watched Koester trip clumsily over a discarded tyre. This unattractive and obsessed young man - why had she made love to him? Perhaps, like Koester, she was merely a vector in Talbert’s dreams. Central Casting. Dr Nathan edged unsteadily along the catwalk, waiting until Webster had reached the next section. He looked down at the huge geometric structure that occupied the central lot of the studio, now serving as the labyrinth in an elegant film version of The Minotaur . In a sequel to Faustus and The Shrew , the film actress and her husband would play Ariadne and Theseus. In a remarkable way the structure resembled her body, an exact formalization of each curve and cleavage. Indeed, the technicians had already christened it ‘Elizabeth’. He steadied himself on the wooden rail as the helicopter appeared above the pines and sped towards them. So the Daedalus in this neural drama had at last arrived. An Unpleasant Orifice. Shielding his eyes, Webster pushed through the camera crew. He stared up at the young woman standing on the roof of the maze, helplessly trying to hide her naked body behind her slim hands. Eyeing her pleasantly, Webster debated whether to climb on to the structure, but the chances of breaking a leg and falling into some unpleasant orifice seemed too great. He stood back as a bearded young man with a tight mouth and eyes ran forwards. Meanwhile Talbert strolled in the centre of the maze, oblivious of the crowd below, calmly waiting to see if the young woman could break the code of this immense body. All too clearly there had been a serious piece of miscasting. ‘Alternate’ Death. The helicopter was burning briskly. As the fuel tank exploded, Dr Nathan stumbled across the cables. The aircraft had fallen on to the edge of the maze, crushing one of the cameras. A cascade of foam poured over the heads of the retreating technicians, boiling on the hot concrete around the helicopter. The body of the young woman lay beside the controls like a figure in a tableau sculpture, the foam forming a white fleece around her naked shoulders.

They have such incredible architecture, humans. Our cities look like worthless blobs, all towering curves and white marble. But these human structures? So eclectic. By God, it’s incredible to see the majesty that they can create.