KodiaX987
Oct 3, 2005, 08:13 PM
Ever heard of the Lassonde Pavilion?
Didn't think so.
It's supposed to be the new "green" building of my university. A building made only of used and recycled materials, that's powered by the leftover power from the main building and keeps cool during summer using reflective rocks and clover plants on top of the structure. Over 82% of the unused materials were recuperated. The building even got featured on a show yesterday. Yeah, sounds pretty nice all right, huh?
Unfortunately, things really didn't go as planned.
First, they contracted the job to engineers not from our school. As strange as it is, we have had our building designed by competitors.
Second, the building's cost busted the budget. And when I mean bust, I really mean bust.
Third, the building was scheduled to be finished end of July. We entered the building in September to be met with naked concrete, rusty staircases, and up-escalators on only the first two floors. The computer rooms are connected together on the network but the independent plugs set up on the tables aren't even linked yet. Most of the pipes and cabling is upfront to the view of all people, with absolutely nothing to conceal them. The entry door sections have no grating. There's tons of people still moving stuff around both inside and outside during classes.
Fourth, the computer, electrical and software engineering comittee rooms were supposed to be moved to the Lassonde building. We'd have a large common area to us three and individual smaller rooms for meetings. We got told at the beginning of the session that the project hadn't even gone past the drawing board stage. When do we learn of that? Now. Because the floor we were currently on was going to be converted to a set of administrative offices, we were literally going to lose our home. Three comittees without a meeting room! It's only after fighting it out that we managed to settle the software and computer engineering comittees together into a single room on the 4th floor. The electrical comittee, we didn't hear of them yet...
Fifth, there is a huge waste of space in the center of the building. The first two floors are used very efficiently: there's an outer set of rooms, and an inner set, so that the corridors form an 8. Up above is some kind of gallery-mezzanine, which looks really nice and beautiful, but we could've fit at least a dozen more rooms. More than enough to allow the comittees to move. But no. Now the third floor is butt-naked and everyone thinks the whole combo is ugly like shit. So to fix the problem, the school tried to turn it into some sort of gallery by putting scale models of stuff and old antiquities from old-days labs and pictures of past presidents. Doesn't work. It looks just as shitty, if not shittier than before.
Sixth, we got a whole bunch of new screens for the computers. Flat screens, nice and big, pretty expensive too. Where did the old CRT monitors go? We never heard of 'em again. OK, so buying LCDs was pretty cool to impress the gallery, but I wanna ask something: was it really worth the cost? CRTs are cheap compared to LCDs even if the gap's narrowing. We could've still used the old CRTs with no problem for a long time.
And last of all, THE COLORS! The first two floors are colored bright red. The next two are orange. The next two are green, and the last two are blue. Sorry, but that doesn't work. Anything except those huge, bright, eye-shattering colors. Sure, they look great at night from the windows and all, real colorful. But inside, it just contributes to giving headaches. There's even some sort of artistic mosaic set up on the first floor that's pretty much invisible until you really look at it. Apparently, the government didn't want to give us our subvention if we didn't hire some bullshit artist to puke a random job on our walls.
So, I peek over the balcony this morning and what do I see? Cameras, deputees, ministers, microphones, wires and dancers all over the place. The people are all dressed in their evening wear and are eating cheese and drinking wine and talking to each other about how great that building is.
Oh yeah? Think about it you bourgeois dumbfucks. Your new school is missing five flights of escalators, three comittee rooms, covers for pipes and cabling, paint on the stairs, and a good decorator. I sure fucking hope that wasn't your backslash against us 'cause you still have a grudge over us contesting your huge funding cut for the schools.
Didn't think so.
It's supposed to be the new "green" building of my university. A building made only of used and recycled materials, that's powered by the leftover power from the main building and keeps cool during summer using reflective rocks and clover plants on top of the structure. Over 82% of the unused materials were recuperated. The building even got featured on a show yesterday. Yeah, sounds pretty nice all right, huh?
Unfortunately, things really didn't go as planned.
First, they contracted the job to engineers not from our school. As strange as it is, we have had our building designed by competitors.
Second, the building's cost busted the budget. And when I mean bust, I really mean bust.
Third, the building was scheduled to be finished end of July. We entered the building in September to be met with naked concrete, rusty staircases, and up-escalators on only the first two floors. The computer rooms are connected together on the network but the independent plugs set up on the tables aren't even linked yet. Most of the pipes and cabling is upfront to the view of all people, with absolutely nothing to conceal them. The entry door sections have no grating. There's tons of people still moving stuff around both inside and outside during classes.
Fourth, the computer, electrical and software engineering comittee rooms were supposed to be moved to the Lassonde building. We'd have a large common area to us three and individual smaller rooms for meetings. We got told at the beginning of the session that the project hadn't even gone past the drawing board stage. When do we learn of that? Now. Because the floor we were currently on was going to be converted to a set of administrative offices, we were literally going to lose our home. Three comittees without a meeting room! It's only after fighting it out that we managed to settle the software and computer engineering comittees together into a single room on the 4th floor. The electrical comittee, we didn't hear of them yet...
Fifth, there is a huge waste of space in the center of the building. The first two floors are used very efficiently: there's an outer set of rooms, and an inner set, so that the corridors form an 8. Up above is some kind of gallery-mezzanine, which looks really nice and beautiful, but we could've fit at least a dozen more rooms. More than enough to allow the comittees to move. But no. Now the third floor is butt-naked and everyone thinks the whole combo is ugly like shit. So to fix the problem, the school tried to turn it into some sort of gallery by putting scale models of stuff and old antiquities from old-days labs and pictures of past presidents. Doesn't work. It looks just as shitty, if not shittier than before.
Sixth, we got a whole bunch of new screens for the computers. Flat screens, nice and big, pretty expensive too. Where did the old CRT monitors go? We never heard of 'em again. OK, so buying LCDs was pretty cool to impress the gallery, but I wanna ask something: was it really worth the cost? CRTs are cheap compared to LCDs even if the gap's narrowing. We could've still used the old CRTs with no problem for a long time.
And last of all, THE COLORS! The first two floors are colored bright red. The next two are orange. The next two are green, and the last two are blue. Sorry, but that doesn't work. Anything except those huge, bright, eye-shattering colors. Sure, they look great at night from the windows and all, real colorful. But inside, it just contributes to giving headaches. There's even some sort of artistic mosaic set up on the first floor that's pretty much invisible until you really look at it. Apparently, the government didn't want to give us our subvention if we didn't hire some bullshit artist to puke a random job on our walls.
So, I peek over the balcony this morning and what do I see? Cameras, deputees, ministers, microphones, wires and dancers all over the place. The people are all dressed in their evening wear and are eating cheese and drinking wine and talking to each other about how great that building is.
Oh yeah? Think about it you bourgeois dumbfucks. Your new school is missing five flights of escalators, three comittee rooms, covers for pipes and cabling, paint on the stairs, and a good decorator. I sure fucking hope that wasn't your backslash against us 'cause you still have a grudge over us contesting your huge funding cut for the schools.