Cities and suburbs, real and imaginary.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Again, Excerpts From An Architecture Textbook

2.3 On Elevators

Louis Kahn,
when he built his famous little museum
knew he must include
an elevator for the elderly,
the lazy, and the ruined

with just two stories
an elevator was for the people
that can't take stairs

3000 pounds is not
much for an elevator
if you think about it

fat people ride the elevator
and fat people ride electric wheelchairs
with other fat people and they all
they weigh lots

and in the future
the dead people will be in tubes
they'll roll around in big, glass and metal tubes
with all-terrain tires that cannot climb stairs
they will refuse to stay dead
in their skyscraping mortuary dormitories

Louis Kahn was a visionary
3000 pounds is not really that much for an elevator
if you are planning on the future
when dead people will drive around art museums
in metal and glass tubes

to look at all these beautiful
ancient things

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