Christina's Campus

Boy! What a surprise! Who'd have thunk that so ultra-contempo a bunch of prison-designing architects as Agence Sauer Kraut would reference a piece of middle-brow Americana kitsch in one of their publicity pieces?

This is, of course, their prize-winning (they got Miss Congeniality, and an honorable mention for their effort in the talent portion of the contest, when they tap-danced while playing the glockenspiel simultaneously) attempt at student-warehousing. And how intriguing that they would insert the pathos-inspiring crippled chick from Andrew Wyeth's widely-reproduced, widely-despised "Christina's World." Were they suggesting an arched-eyebrow irony by juxtaposing the American maiden crawling through the corn? And that French girl gazing blithely on? What does she signify? Is she about to finish her sandwich, get up and finish Christina off, so that she can have their miserly-sized dorm-cell all to herself? What could these sadomasochistic architecturally-astute jail-wardens be hinting at? What kinky fantasies lurk behind those double-glazed windows, inside a structure that was clearly intended to be every bit as sexually-inspiring as the campus at UC-Irvine? It's all a bit Hitchcock, isn't it?

Good News For Post-Modern Man

Such good news!

They're tearing the building down and starting over!  Yes!

Ok, so it's not good news like that . . . but its good news just the same.

I've got the architect's name!  

It's Sauerkraut! (en Francais: Choucroute).

Ok, so it's not actually Sauerkraut, not Choucroute, but it's damn close. Given that today is, after all, Monday, when nobody in France goes to work much anyway — and it's  Easter Monday at that — the tastefully bustling offices of Agence d'Architecture Choucroute are closed anyway, so it wouldn't make sense to call 'em. Other than to leave a voice mail, of course. But, hey, be my guest! It's a free-ish country.

But really. Really! It's such really good news! You should see the proud papa achitect photoshopped-photos!   They just couldn't be more pleased with how their creation looks in photoshop, with all the wee li'l authentique pedestrian-esque folk nearby, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon artfully  arrayed as a backdrop (there being nothing — NOTHING! — that an architect loves so much as using a prior generation's avant-ultra style, now in terrible ultra-disrepute, of course, as a backdrop to this new masterstroke of super-stylin' ass-whippin' genius-osity.  It's kind of like some medieval morally-instructive vision of Heaven (my latest design) and (yours, avec amber-tinted salad-bar sneeze-guard plexi-glas balcony-blocking poodle-catching patio panels, which might as well be in avocado green and harvest gold, you gauche retrograded gulag-decorating bastard) Hell.

More to be revealed, of course. But I couldn't help but share this good news for (post) modern man.

The Solution

THE FUNKY WESTERN CIVILIZATION
(Tonio K.)

come on everybody
get on your feet
get with the beat
there's a brand new dance craze
sweeping the nation
and it's called the funky western civilization

well there's a riot in the courthouse, there's a fire in the street
there's a sinner bein' trampled by a thousand pious feet
there's a baby every minute bein' born without a chance
now don't that make you want to jump right up and start to dance?

My Struggle As An Architect

Okay, so once again you're thinking, "Man, what kind of crime did those poor bastards behind bars DO that they've gotta keep them so securely away from us decent folk?"  Probably you're hiding the valuables under the mattress at this very moment, right?

But no!  It's not merely to keep them locked up like a whole bunch of Counts of Monte Cristo (plural), like Colonel Dreyfuss, the traitor (oops!  sorry!  our bad!  never mind! deso-fuckin'-lee!), it's also about keeping the riff-raff out!  But surely you knew that?  Surely you already knew that Architects are mainly visionaries, to the wee tiny degree that they're visionaries at all, of social control.

Because this charming new prison site is set sternly at the very gateway of Chateau Rouge, and as any Parisian (most of whom would never go anywhere near there) could tell you, that basically means "Little Africa."  It's the greatest ethnic concentration in all of France.  It's the first step, fresh off the boat, into Paris, the city where most of the African music in the world gets recorded, and where African hair gets plaited, and where Best Africa sells absurdly large plates of absurdly fragant and absurdly tasty food for five euros and where everybody meets up at L'Omadis, and where there are waxcloth tailoring joints and African bookstores and herbshops and couscous et tangine restaurants where the Senegalese neighbors simply step behind the bar and pour themselves a glass of water and . . . well, here, 

http://vibesdafrique.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=4&action=display&thread=1315

here's a little list of African record stores in Paris, and after halfway down, it's all within a rock-throw of this particular brand new architectural wonder penal institution.

But see, that's the other reason for the bars.  What do we learn about our pal, The Architect?  

Gee, let's get his name, and his phone number, and we'll call him up and let him represent himself.  We'll let him explain those prison bars, and the Correctional Institution Aesthetic.  We'll let him discuss what he's learned from his struggle — "Mein Kampf" is how that translates into German — at The Drancy School of Architecture.

The Design School of Drancy

Nice, huh?

Reminds me of that rough stretch I did in the Maximum Security Penitentiary in San Quentin.  Oh, they tried their best to break me, but I just zipped my lip — I'd never rat anyone out!  And then, once I finally got out of solitary confinement, I paid six packs of cigarettes to get a new tattoo on my chest, done with a rusty needle and lampblack ink:  Less Is More!   With topless Chicana lasses wearing sombreros and wings and garter-belts framing it.  

I'm tempted, of course, to declare this architectural style The Stalag 13 School, but it is, after all, France, and there's a certain resistance (not much of a Resistance, really, unless you call ordering another bottle of Vichy water a resistance) to les Allegmagne.  But really, it's probably much more appropriate to title this type of architectural endeavor as adhering to The School of Drancy.

(Drancy, just south of Paris, was an internment camp — easily and conveniently converted from public housing — where Vichy officials, French government functionaries, gathered undesirables so they could hand them over to the Gestapo and then see them swept off to Auschwitz and elsewhere.  Designed for 700, it held as many as 7,000; once again proving the incredible efficiency of modern architectural design.)

Brutality Is In The Details

Okay, it's kind of ugly.

Okay, so it's really ugly.  Really ugly and brutal.  Really, really U & B.

But it's only when you get up close (and it sort of militates against getting up close) that you learn how extra-ugly it really is.

Apparently, it's not just God that's in the details.  Ugliness is in the details, too.

(And then, next, we get to talk about the neighborhood this Cellblock Number Nine just landed right on top of . . . although using Architect-O-Talk, we probably shouldn't call it a neighborhood,  but instead simply pile up a few juice-free jargon-morsels, like Common Built Environment Contextuality (you can pretty much just load up on that type of language, you know, because it all makes as much or as little sense as the next four-car-pileup.)

Do the Crime, Do the Time! Or, Escape From Devil's Island

No, I don't know what crime you have to commit to get incarcerated here.  I'd imagine it would have to be pretty darn serious, like a whole series of bank-robbery-rape-murder-massacres, because clearly The Architect intended that no one would ever manage to escape from his own personal Alcatraz.

In France, as it happens, you get to wear your own clothes in prison. That stripe-y jail pajama stuff undoubtedly got declared cruel and unusual punishment.  They haven't actually opened (or closed, I guess) this prison, so it's hard to tell what the inmates will be like, but I'm guessing they're likely to be a pretty rough bunch, a set of hard cases, the kind of tough customers who will be staring with flinty-eyes through the little slits of windows they've been provided, carving fake guns out of soap, and planning their big breakout.  

Boy, I wouldn't want to be The Architect — what was his name again? — when they get their hands around his neck.   I can just hear 'em now, growling "Assymetrical random pattern windows that don't open properly?  Why, you rotten bastard!  Here's an random assymetrical boot up your ass!"