(no subject)

ginny_t, I think you'll be entertained by this. Maybe. :P

I'm not so sure if I want to apply for a Teaching English Overseas company if their brochure has such sentences as "We GUARANTEE you a job at one of the 1,000's of schools..."

That 1,000's really looks ugly. And it's repeated twice in the booklet.

And then there's this in a statement of a satisfied customer:

"We retired, & took the program."

Full stop.

*facepalm*

"The Cubes" at Richmond and the DVP

This is my aunt's boyfriend, Ben Kutner! From this article on TheStar.com.

~~

Legalities block cube-ist's vision

Architect wants permission to move Eastern Ave. structures

CHRISTOPHER HUME

They have stood on Eastern Ave. at the foot of Sumach St. for a decade. Despite being neglected and covered in ads, they are a Toronto landmark, if not an icon.

We are referring, of course, to the trio of large green metal cubes visible throughout much of the lower east side of the downtown core.

Though the city has changed hugely since they first appeared in 1996, the cubes still look like relics of some ideal future that never happened. Even Toronto's most striking architectural addition, Will Alsop's flying tabletop on McCaul St., owes a spiritual debt to the cubes.

But architect Ben Kutner, who designed and built the big boxes, remains ever hopeful they will yet have their day.

For the time being, however, he is up to his neck in lawyers, lawsuits and litigation that have kept him from fully realizing his vision. It is a familiar and sadly banal story of property owners, franchises and human greed. So far, only the lawyers have profited. And while they lob arguments back and forth uselessly, Kutner grows madder and more frustrated each day.

He now lives in Ottawa, where he has constructed a one-third life-size model of one of his cubes. But it, too, is in danger of being torn down.

"The idea of the cubes project is to create living space out of the infrastructure," Kutner explains. "We can build the Ponte Vecchio again. By lifting the cubes above ground, we leave it free for gardens, parks and so on. If the public understood what was going on, there'd be a revolution."

Maybe. Maybe not. But in either case, the cubes should be given a chance. As Kutner points out, they were built as a demonstration project and still aren't finished.

Originally, there were supposed to be seven cubes, each standing on a point three storeys above ground. They would have been connected on top by a green roof.

The beauty of the cubes, says Kutner, lies in their versatility, affordability and their portability. They can be erected in weeks and have multiple applications, including residential, commercial and light industrial.

Because they are raised, they can be used in areas prone to flooding or even tsunamis. They can also be arranged to form bridges, or placed in sites too small for conventional building.

In the meantime, Kutner is consumed by a lawsuit, the outcome of which hinges on whether his cubes, legally speaking, are chattel or fixtures. If they are declared fixtures (immovable property), Kutner will likely lose his case and his cubes will be sold. If, as he argues, they're declared chattel (moveable property), it would mean he can remove the cubes from the site and re-erect them elsewhere. That's what Kutner is hoping for. But at this stage, he's not holding his breath.

"The cubes are like Expo 67 pavilions," he claims. "They were meant to be moved. I built them with the intention of moving them. They are an industrial prototype."

The cubes were "invented" in the 1980s by Dutch structuralist architect Piet Blom. The intention was to come up with a form of cheap housing that could be used in restricted and awkward sites. In 1986, Kutner visited Blom and purchased the rights to his cubes, the best-known examples of which can be found in Rotterdam.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, where lawyers are the de facto urban planners, the cubes have been reduced to billboards. What could have been one of the most intriguing elements on the skyline has been turned into a civic embarrassment.

If the cubes have to be moved, move them. There must be a place for them somewhere, especially in a city with a critical shortage of housing.

"My whole life has been destroyed," Kutner declares. "My fight now is with the legal system. We're pissing away millions in lawyers' fees and getting nowhere. The culture has lost its collective mind. This was supposed to be an infill project, but it's ended up a nightmare."

~~

Here's another article on "The Cubes". It also has pictures on this one in case you're unsure how these things look.