Names

I ran across an article in my local Bastion of Literary Truth (they have a flashy website, though) today -- it was essentially shameless promotion for a book which recently came out called Eat This, Not That. The article in the paper had some troubling "examples" from the book, such as the following, which i reproduce here verbatim:

>> Dairy Queen's banana split has 530 calories and 12 grams of fat compared to Baskin-Robbins' version, which packs 1,030 calories and 39 grams of fat.
From experience, i know that this must depend on (1) the varieties of ice cream used in the banana split, (2) the quantity of ice cream used, and (3) the quantity and varieties of toppings added. So unless Dairy Queen has made a major breakthrough in ice cream technology, i think the take-home message ought to be that Baskin Robbins' banana splits are larger and more delicious on average than Dairy Queen's, and if you wish to cut back on the calories and fat involved, you ought to share it with a friend, or better yet, a date (because if you try to share the Dairy Queen version, there won't be enough to satisfy your craving for sweet, banana and ice cream goodness).

And, although i haven't read the book, i can see from the cover art that it falls into the same trap. Comparing a Big Mac to a Whopper may seem like a fair comparison, but just because they're both "burgers" does not make them the same thing.
Wikipedia (i can't fathom why this information is encyclopedic, but i'm glad it made the cut) lists the following ingredients for each. I organized them to be easier to compare.

Big Mac: Two 1.6 oz (45.4 g)(total 3.2 oz, 90.8 g) beef patties, iceberg lettuce, American cheese, pickles, onion, special McDonald's "Mac" sauce (a Thousand Island dressing variant), three part sesame seed bun.
Whopper (with cheese): One 4 oz (113.4 g) beef patty, lettuce, American cheese, pickles, tomato, raw sliced onion, ketchup, mayonnaise, sesame seed bun.

If you're wondering what Thousand Island dressing is made of, let me tell you a little secret -- it's ketchup and mayonnaise...which makes the two burgers identical, except for two things. One, the Big Mac doesn't have a tomato slice, which in the grand scheme of the comparison is rather insignificant. Two, the total beef patty quotient (bpq) of the Whopper is 25% larger than the Big Mac. It does, admittedly, sport 40% more calories and 62% more fat, but you're also getting MORE FOOD. The squashed down picture of the Whopper on the cover is clearly designed to disguise this fact. Now, you may point out that the conclusion still holds -- the Big Mac is still less fattening per calorie than the Whopper. But caloric quantity is a piss-poor measure of food's healthiness. Would you believe that a single serving of pasta without any sauce packs an astounding 200 calories? And a normal plate of pasta at most restaurants can have TWO to THREE servings, pushing that number to SIX HUNDRED CALORIES?!?

Well, you'd better believe it. Because when you consider that the FDA's recommended 2000 calorie diet often gets compacted into three meals, you have to average at least 650+ calories per meal. That's a low estimate, too, because you're likely eating less for breakfast. That said, calories aren't bad for you. What matters is "empty calories", that is, calories which do not provide any satiety. The satiety index is a measure of this phenomenon, and i've linked to one of many sites listing the values of some common foods.

I'm getting sidetracked in my attempt to make a point. If you're going to compare things, you need to be sure to compare salient details. Fat per pound of burger would be a step in the right direction. It's just not good enough to assume that because both are "burgers" or "banana splits" that they're identical in all ways.

It's the same thing with architecture (wow! he finally brought it back to the topic of the blog!). I sat in on a review of a student's project recently, and the harshest criticism of it was that she described it as a tower, whereas "a tower has to have at least 20 stories". First off, there are no definitions of 'tower' that state this, that i can find. In the context of ants, a blade of grass is a tower. In the middle of a low, sprawling city, i think 15 stories can squeeze its way into being called a tower. It always depends on the context.

But naming schemes affect more than just how we define a building. The aforementioned "tower" is of course not at all comparable to, say, the Sears Tower. As such, it would be abhorrent to try to compare their carbon footprints, whatever that even means. The 15 story tower is clearly going to win (at least, it had better). Calling both "towers" doesn't do them justice. When it's important to specify, it's important to specify, circular though that statement may sound.

Or, if you want to capture elements of the Arts and Crafts movement like in the previous post, make sure you know more than its name. Most people are too busy to investigate every claim they run across, so some are erroneously ignored and other erroneously accepted. When it's in hard print and advertised by your newspaper, enough people are going to accept it on blind faith that it becomes problematic.

So maybe this has been a long winded way to say "don't believe everything you read in a book." Still, you should believe everything i say in this blog. More importantly, don't be dishonest about your arguments. In the long run, it's bad for everybody.

Rules

Some people like to make blanket statements. This is always wrong. ALWAYS. That was irony, you can laugh. I'm talking here about statements like "Rules are meant to be broken". This particular blanket statement i'd like to dissect and, i hope, eventually disprove.

There are three ways to interact with rules. You can follow them explicitly (to the letter), you can follow them implicitly (the spirit of the rule) or you can break them outright. Each position has legitimacy, but (as always) context is crucial.

People often rail against following rules explicitly, but there are thousands of situations where it happens, and that's a good thing. Dicta about murder crop up universally, perhaps the most famous of which is "Thou shalt not kill". It's essentially illegal everywhere. It's quite black and white -- don't end someone's life. You can't half kill someone. There are, of course, gray areas even here -- is abortion murder, and what about animals? How is that different? I don't presume to be able to answer those questions, but i can say that it is the goal of modern governments to clarify those questions as much as possible, albeit through very different methodologies depending on the political schema. And i'm quite glad that we can all agree that killing me is not socially acceptable. I rather like living.

These prescriptive measures are also present in architect -ure. Some are universal, others are determined by the client. The capacity for an elevated floor to not-collapse is pretty much a given. But should it shield you from the elements? Well...probably. The natatorium at Cranbrook in Michigan is quite the counter-example. Those "windows" are glassless, and the colossal well of light in the ceiling opens directly to the sky. Then again, you don't have to sleep in a natatorium.

This is where the line blurs, and you have to follow the spirit of the rule. This can be tricky, because what you do might be technically illegal (or against the rule, when laws are not involved). To be responsible, you have to investigate the rationale behind the creation of the original rule. It is, as legend will have it, illegal to serenade your girlfriend in Kalamazoo, and Fox News reports that it's illegal to shower in the nude in Florida. I'm totally baffled by the latter, but i suppose the former may have caused a series of problematic public disturbances. It would certainly arouse my anger should men nightly approach my neighbor's house (all girls) and sing bawdy love ballads in the wee hours of the morning. The law was likely a knee-jerk reaction to a situation that got out of hand, and as such is worded much more generally than it ought to be.

Most laws aren't so absurd, though. The rolling-stop at stop signs is one of the most common complaints of police nit-picking. However, i see plenty of bikers barrel right through stop signs even when the intersection is crowded. It's just stupid...and dangerous, and it makes drivers less amicable to bikers on the roads. All around, you should pretty much just stop at stop signs.

And the previous comment about floors being built to not-collapse -- within that statement is the moral value not to injure people in your buildings. I happen to think that's rather important, but it might be less so if you're designing a trap door (every evil genius needs a trap door in front of his desk). Or if you're designing some kind of crazy plastic hamster-cage for kids (you know, the kind with all the the tiny plastic balls that little kids get lost in? Indoor playgrounds -- they go by a lot of names) maybe you actually WANT them to fall through the floor! Of course, you want them to do it safely -- safety and convenience are two good reasons for the no-collapse rule in the first place.

At the risk of sounding pedantic...
It's when you don't think about the rule you're breaking that passes into the realm of irresponsibility. You can even outright break rules completely if you think they're unjustly founded. Insurgents call this revolution, the RIAA calls it piracy, and parents call it teen angst. All these are legitimate forms of expression, equally valid with voting, i might even argue.

Now, this isn't to say that i think you need to study theory religiously in order to have a responsible practice, be it in architecture or any other field. That's not necessary. A working knowledge of theory is required, though, in order to be able to be aware of what direction your work is taking. Should you be a jazz musician, you may not be terribly interested in Baroque teaching methods. But you should be interested in blues, ragtime, and precedent, because it's directly related to your personal direction. Should you be a developer who claims to support the Arts & Crafts movement, you should probably consider how it arose from Art Nouveau and preceded Modernism. It's ALL about context. ALWAYS.

Interlude

If you haven't check out Tomek Baginski's work, now is your chance. Unfortunately, these videos aren't as high quality as i'd like, but the questionably legal medium of the torrent site *cough cough HINT cough* has the originals. Katedra (Cathedral) is...amazing.

Katedra
Rain
Fallen Art

While i'm on the topic of digital shorts...

Undo, by Marcin Waśko
Duel, by Colin Elliot
Guy's Dog, by Rory Breshnihan

I guess only Katedra and Rain really have anything to do with architecture whatsoever (although Duel has some interesting landscape), but it's so rare to come across high quality short films (Although Pixar popularized more than a few) that i thought i'd share the ones i'd found.

Perspective

A recent comment by one of my colleagues reminded me of this topic, and i think it's important enough that it should be shared. It doesn't have much to do with architecture, but my argument does, so i hope to bring this post full circle by the end.

So then, homosexuals.

I believe rather strongly in the concept of "live and let live," so i really don't care one way or another what people prefer sexually. It doesn't affect me in any way, shape or form, so i have no objection to it -- homosexuality doesn't cause global warming or unrest in the middle east. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community doesn't rail against psychology like, say, the Church of Scientology. I think many people will agree with me on these points.

Of course, there are a large number of people who do not. Some fundamental Christians, for example, find homosexuality a perversion of the natural order of life, or a sign of moral degeneration. I have no desire to argue with those people. They're welcome to their beliefs. Just don't push them on me, or anyone else. No one is forcing you to be gay, why would you force them to be straight?

Never mind those people. Let's talk about the people that fall halfway between the two. Tolerance is "trendy" these days, which i suppose is good, but it also means a lot of people have no idea what they're talking about, which doesn't do much good convincing this halfway group of the error of their ways. Before i continue, let me define the group.

These are the people who use "gay" and other references to homoesexuality as a pejorative. "This test is gay. What a faggot! I got gayed by some kid on Halo. (This, interestingly, shares a syntax with the older "I got jewed by..." slang). That guy was a total cock-gobbler." I apologize if i've offended anyone's sensibilities with these examples, but they're all too common. This kind of language is absolutely rampant in middle schools and high schools, and there are more than a few that continue to speak this way in college.

The odd thing is that these people do not consider themselves to be homophobic, or in any way gay bashing. If confronted, they'll make excuses like "Well, i didn't mean it to be offensive to gay people. I have gay friends!" (This, interestingly, shares a history with the older "I'm not a racist, I have black friends!"). Or, they might say "I was using the word ghey, which isn't the same thing as gay." I even know people who consider gay bashing to be acceptable within the confines of their own home, as though it's acceptable as long as there aren't any gay people around.

All of these excuses are completely irrelevant. They may, in fact, all be true excuses, but they have nothing to do with the problem at hand. The problem is the zeitgeist. Every time anyone uses an epithet involving homosexuality, or speaks of homosexuality in a pejorative tone, it fosters an environment of intolerance. Translated by the independent observer, the speaker is saying "Being gay is not acceptable. People who are gay are social misfits."

This information is interpreted in two major ways. The first way is to understand that the speaker is biased against homosexuals. The second is to be afraid to admit that you are yourself homosexual for fear of social suicide. The fear of this information reaching the speaker may cause intense distress. I posit that no one should live in fear because of a personal choice, be it religion, sexuality, profession, or otherwise.

It doesn't matter how you meant it. What matters is how it is understood.

This poses a problem. Perhaps i say to a friend "Man, that pop machine totally gypped me", without realizing that i had just made a racial epithet. It's against gypsies, if you're wondering. By my above bolded statement, it should be my fault that i had been interpreted as racist. In this case, ignorance truly is a legitimate excuse. However, knowing that i can avoid insulting gypsies in the future, i ought to cease the usage of that particular word. If i were to continue its use, it would be my fault again.

Some people will continue to argue that it is irrational to be offended by the pejorative usage of the word "gay". "It means something different now," they might say. This is almost a good argument, but it has a massive flaw. Before this argument would hold, you would have to prove that being gay was irrational (any argument for that is far, far beyond the scope of this blog). Consider this absurd analogy; "You shouldn't be insulted when i take the Lord's name in vain, because God doesn't exist anyway. It's irrational to believe in God."

You can't force other people to understand you a certain way. But if you want people to understand a certain thing, you can gauge the context of the situation and use certain language, gestures...typefaces? I bolded the take-home message of this post. I'll write it again, for gravitas.

It doesn't matter how you meant it. What matters is how it is understood.

Ok, so what does this have to do with architecture? Everything. Substitute speech for architecture and you're done. I don't know that the built environment can be racist or homophobic or whatever by itself (a drinking fountain is just a drinking fountain, until you only allow, for example, whites to use it. But the drinking fountain isn't reinforcing racist stereotypes, the sign is.) Still, the Parthenon means something entirely different now than it did to the ancient Greeks. Like art, architecture means whatever the observer gets out of it. Whether the observer be an architectural historian or a 4 year old kid, the perspective is equally valid.

And we should all be aware of the impact of our choices, regardless of what those choices may be.

Landmarks

The Grand Canyon. The Eiffel Tower. The Great Wall of China. The Damon's off exit 110 on US-127?

I was discussing a project a few months ago at an interim stage of the work, and my colleague suggested to me that the structure might be a bit too monumental for the small scope of the assignment. My gut instinct was to argue that there's no reason to avoid monumentality, but following the suggestions of some folk to whom i am terribly indebted, i considered the point. It makes a lot of sense on a lot of levels, i have to admit.

Monumentality can be an awfully annoying thing. For example, most stores take shot at it in one way or another, usually through signs (the McDonald's arch is pretty iconic in that regard). Monuments say "hey! hey look at me!". The "good" ones say something culturally, historically, or otherwise important, like the examples of the Eiffel Tower or the Great Wall. Still others, which are neither "good" nor "bad" but simply "awesome" (in the true meaning of the word), like the Grand Canyon, instill in us feelings which most of us ignore most of the time; this is why we flock to them in the first place -- rare, sometimes new experiences.

But i was not designing anything on the scope of the Eiffel Tower. Would my building draw needless attention only to reveal...nothing beyond it?

I'll interject with a story. I visited some relatives in a mid-sized town in Wisconsin a year or two back. One of my younger cousins was working in a diner, and we had all gone there one morning when she was working. Here, in the most unlikely of places, was this big, leather-clad biker dude. His jacket was tossed across the back of his chair. Where his t-shirt ended, tattoos picked up covering the skin of his arms -- more were visible on his neck. Totally cliché biker, totally out of place. But what was even more strange was what he was doing, waiting for his food. He was reading a book (no no, that's not the strange part). I looked closer, expecting to find some trashy novel, fulfilling my stereotyped biker. It was Sophie's Choice. Wow. I did NOT see that one coming.

My brother had pointed this out to me, and he proceeded to launch into an explanation of how he loved to have his stereotypes challenged, how it reminded him that each person is an individual.

In my previous post i wrote about causes, and how we cement certain understandings of them in order to keep them straight. This applies to humans, too -- if you go into a 7-11 and the guy behind the counter has an AK-47, a mask on, and is "stocking" the liquor into a box, he's probably not going to ring up your Slurpee. That's a stereotype -- and, if i do say so myself, a damn useful one. It's important for us to distinguish characteristics of people based on appearance -- if you didn't, the 7-11 teller might shoot you one day, and you'll feel pretty stupid! When we do this wrong, it's called prejudice. When we do it properly, it's discerning.

I read an article once (sadly, i've lost the citation) which described a number of attributes upon which strangers evaluate you on first sight. These included the obvious like physical attractiveness, but also intelligence, social standing, and relative wealth. I wonder what first impressions people make of buildings?

Which brings me back to the topic of the project, which i eventually reined it in so that it would stand out without falling victim to landmark-tropes, and by referencing other landmarks in the area. The details are unimportant, but the mechanism by which it was interesting was much more subtly appreciated than the original design. When it advertised its monumentality, the design was not an individual in my mind, but an archetype. But no building should be designed as an archetype, because it can never achieve that goal. It may be perceived that way as a way to understand the environment, but that would be only a superficial involvement with the site.

So why would i mention a restaurant that hardly anyone knows (remember the beginning of the post)? Despite its blasé (archetypal) qualities, it is an individual. Unfortunately, i doubt its architects conceived of it as such.

When i return home from a particular direction, it's the first building that says to me "hey, you're pretty much home now." Sure, i can read the signs that tell me i'm, say, 3 miles out (that's 5 km for you metric folk), but it doesn't really have the same feeling of arrival. And i don't even go to that Damon's. In fact, i think it's owned by a different restaurant chain now, but it's still the same building. It's nothing special, really, but for some subconscious reason, it's the furthest point from my house that heralds arrival.

Which is just one example of how anything can become a landmark. There are others, to be sure. Admittedly, some places are more likely to be landmarks than others. Still, no matter what the building, there's no reason to shy away from monumentality. Ostentatious self-presentation, sure, but if you have a really great idea, there's no sense dumbing it down because it's loud. Let the world hear your thoughts!

And if it's a building, and your idea sucks, we can always tear it down later.

Every Minute Zen

A Zen koan (original source unknown)

Zen students are with their masters at least ten years before they presume to teach others. Nan-in was visited by Tenno, who, having passed his apprenticeship, had become a teacher. The day happened to be rainy, so Tenno wore wooden clogs and carried an umbrella. After greeting him Nan-in remarked: "I suppose you left your wodden clogs in the vestibule. I want to know if your umbrella is on the right or left side of the clogs."

Tenno, confused, had no instant answer. He realized that he was unable to carry his Zen every minute. He became Nan-in's pupil, and he studied six more years to accomplish his every-minute Zen.


A few minutes after completing my last post, i was walking down a hallway in a similar direction as a colleague of mine. Absently -- as i was considering two articles i had just read -- i asked him how he was, or some permutation of that question. His answer was startlingly honest, describing how he hadn't been feeling that well lately, etc. etc...
He never realized it, but i felt terribly embarrassed by his (unintentional) chastisement. Here i had just finished writing about that sort of social interactions, and i was falling into the same old rut. I had lost my Every Minute Zen.

Of course, you can't care about everything all the time. You'd probably go insane. From one perspective of that statement, i can't truly interact with every person i ever pass in a hallway. It might be nice to imagine, but there are simply too many people, and no one has a memory quite that amazing. From another reading of that statement, there are just too many issues to worry about at one time before you crumple under the combined stress of a thousand injustices. The humanitarian crisis in Darfur, AIDS in Africa, civil conflict over the Tibetan Plateau, global warming, crooked (lecherous) politicians, the food industry...

I often shy away from debates about such things. It's not that i don't feel they're important, but i haven't got the time to re-evaluate my position on each subject three times a day. That's the providence of the politicians we elect. They get paid to re-evaluate based on new information; they also have dozens of staffers. Once a position has been carefully considered, most of us have no desire to think about it again, unless we are actively working with that particular problem.

This is what i had done with my previous post. I had been considering human interactions as an anecdote to push an architectural ideal. Architecture is my work, and although work absorbs a large part of my thought and life, there are (*gasp*) times when i am not thinking about architecture. Is this enough?

Is it good enough to be a paragon of certain ideals while at work if you can not uphold those ideals elsewhere?

I have three answers for that. First, the politician argument. A politician is a professional face, a symbol of our ideals. In public, the politician is expected to uphold certain ideals. Like the see-no-evil monkey, we're content if we don't know about the adulterous secret life of the person behind the politician. When we do know, however, it becomes problematic. Our symbol no longer stands for the same things. In this way, the private persona is inextricable from the public works. The best the politician can hope for is to conceal his/her clandestine acts for as long as possible. This lack of every-minute Zen is unacceptable. You are free to disagree. Thomas Jefferson, for example, kept slaves while simultaneously writing the Declaration of Independence, which includes wording which is anti-slavery. You might argue that his lack of every-minute Zen was outweighed by the triumph of his public works.

One the other hand, you have the Luke Skywalker type of hero. I use a fictional example because all real heroes will in some way fall into the third category. Luke Skywalker is essentially perfect. He makes mistakes, but he makes them in good faith. He consistently strives to heal the overtly Fascist regime of the Empire (ever looked up "stormtrooper"?). If he slights a friend while drinking in a cantina, no one is going to disbar his hero status as Savior of the Galaxy. He is not a person, he is a symbol. His every-minute Zen is irrelevant.

The third example is Christopher Columbus. Columbus Day is a national holiday here in the United States. Columbus Day commemorates the "discovery" of the New World. Columbus also started wars, spread disease, and abused the good faith of many native American tribes. How is this different from the Thomas Jefferson example? Both did um, great things...well, maybe accidentally finding 10 million square miles of land isn't so great, but that's not the point. Columbus committed such blatant atrocities that he cannot ascribe to the Luke Skywalker status of symbolic hero. I refuse to accept him as a symbol of greatness, because other people view him as a symbol of suffering, and i choose not to disenfranchise those people with my opinions.

The answer then to all this might be: Keep as much Every-Minute Zen as it takes to be sure your legacy is not affected by it. When in doubt, err on the side of caution, though. The moment we stop trying to get better at it is the moment we aren't doing enough.

Ants

From Waking Life

(Main character is coming out of a subway and bumps into a girl.)

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw, I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, no. I don't want to be an ant either. Heh. Yeah, thanks for kind of jostling me there. I've been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don't feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It's kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road. And instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls "the confrontation between their souls." It's like, um, freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.

Then it's like we have met.

(They shake hands)

There's something unusual to me about the inanity of human interaction. Even when you take the time to legitimately ask someone a personal question, there's no guarantee they're in the divulging state of mind requisite for them to respond in kind. You're more likely to get a dismissive "fine" or "all right" to a question à la "how was your day?" than the cathartic expression of emotions that the question ought to elicit.

Of course, this is not terribly surprising. Most people ask such questions as a courtesy, to establish what linguistic theory calls a communicative channel. No one really wants to know "what's up", most of the time. And who can blame them, when the real answer (even from a friend) might be "Well, i didn't sleep very well because i kept having to get up to relieve this explosive diarrhea i've been having, plus my ex-wife isn't speaking to me since i took our kid to that Slayer concert, so that was awkward picking him up before work. Then i missed breakfast, which i was really looking forward to..."

Who cares?

Well, maybe no one, for that example. But the point is that sometimes people really need you to listen to them, and sometimes you really want to know about a person. Especially if you haven't spoken to them in a while, and want to re-establish the connection. But that's not what i wanted to talk about.

I wanted to talk about crazy architecture. Or at least, architecture which ostensibly has little function, but which i'm going to argue is worthwhile anyway. In another post, i might argue that anything worthwhile is functional, but for lack of a better word, i'll stick with functional. The Vanna Venturi house is a good example. Not the whole thing, just the nowhere stair. It truly is useless. It goes nowhere. But it's interesting, because it's different, and it jostles us out of our ant-mode. That's worth something, right?



Bear with me for a moment as i describe something else entirely. In an entirely appropriate way, the Zumthor Baths at Vals epitomized an idea i had had for years before i'd ever heard of the project. These images taken from another blog.


Here the walls drop directly into the baths, more like naturally flooded caverns than pools with decks, albeit, you know, quartzite and concrete. Now, i've always appreciated an extreme use of water, especially in unexpected places. I suppose baths aren't exactly the most unexpected of places, but the style is pretty fantastic. What if you had something like that in your basement? You know, you open the door to the basement, take a few steps down, and BAM! it's a pool! Pretty awesome, right? Maybe if you really had to have a deck, it could be on the opposite side, so you had to swim there. I guess you could have another entrance of some sort for the land-bound, but that's really not the point. The point is avoiding the banality of normal, almost institutional forms like pools...or stairs.

This is all well and good for design studio, but how can it be realized in the harsh consumerist reality of a practice? Can it? It's certainly not easy to sell something on the basis of how cool and unusual it is. There's validity to the opposition, too. If you live in a house with a second story door that opens to the outside...air...after a while the novelty of it will wear off, and you'll never open the door again, except maybe to laugh about it with visitors. The same goes for the useless stair. It has to be both unusual and useful in another way. You have to want a pool to appreciate a secret basement-pool.

But if you do want one, wouldn't you rather have one that's different from everyone else's? And the more people that feel that way, the more often you'll be jarred out of your ant-mode.