si... howdy, amigos. Greetings from the AIA San Antonio show this past week in, who could have guessed, San Antonio, TX. I know that there is a real architectural road show happening in TX, but I became burried at the show with answering questions like, "Can you tell me where the restrooms are?" and, my personal favorite, "Do you know if Al Gore is speaking today or tomorrow?" I did get a chance to eat some great food, look at some nice stuff and dream about projects with unlimited budgets for all the cool stuff at the show. I arrived back in Raleigh with a strained back and shoulder burn from all the crap I picked up at the show. Oh well.
We are introducing a new line and we ended up taking the new line guy out to Mortons for din-din one night. He was so happy that he purchased steak knives for all of us (nice set of six). Pretty cool until TSA gets into your luggage and says, "What the..." For a moment I thought about trying to get them through security under the pretense that they are doctor's orders for a predisposition to dead cow. I felt fairly confident that I could snow the security "expert" with this type of language, but, in the end, checked them through -much to the delight and entertainment of TSA.
We didn't get a chance to see too much architecture outside of downtown due to the ARCHITECTURE convention, but I did manage to slip on over to the library with the ever present coworker. If you get a chance to rent the SpyKids series, you get a pretty good chance to see the exterior of this building on a great sunny day. Unfortunately, when we were there, it was overcast and muggy and very, very humid. I felt like a Cohiba on patrol in a cigar vault. At any rate, the interior has a great sense of color, light and space and is loaded down with art... including one nice glass sculpture by a PACIFIC NORTHWEST artist.
The nicest level in the place, from my limited perspective, was the children's level. They have a nice ceramic-like art bull under a couple of arched walls and some nice water features outside on the roof terraces. Unfortunately, the terraces and even the interior balconies were all closed. I don't know if this is due to suicidal literary fans who think that a library would be a good place to off oneself (????) or if this is due to things like, "I'll get you, Larry. When you go down the lower level I'm dropping War and Peace on your melon. Hardcover, too, you bastard!" Not sure, but a real bummer for architectural fans.
Now, don't hate me. I do like the work of Ricardo (http://www.e-architect.com/news/aiarchitect/jan00/goldmedal.asp) , but for my money, the cathedral like space with the open stairwell ends of the parking garage rocked. The pictures up top side do not do it justice, due to the muggy, sweat dripping day of discovery at the library. Everything looked and was hazy. But trust me. When you go to the Central library, park in the PAY (!!!!!!!) parking garage and check out the center space. It is pretty cool. I liked it for it's honesty and light and sense of shelter. The library was very cool, but the parking garage got me.
The water features in the city are also very cool as most of you may already know. The riverwalk is a cool place to go to when you want to hang out with your special someone. They have the little tour boats which I mistakenly called "Sewer Tours" to the dismay of one riverboat captain. Those look like fun as long as you are not sitting next to 15 other sweaty convention attendees in May. "Ewww... I can see inside your pores!"
The Skies over America did nothing for me. Big tower. I may feel differently when and if I ever go to the top.
The Henry B G. Convention Center was pretty good. Well laid out. Nice details and great color. I highly recommend it for you and 22,000 of your closest friends.
Until the next rodeo...
take good care,
-G
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