ANSWERS TO THE PUZZLE

OK, Guys...better to post this near perfect draft rather than try to get it perfect and lose it altogether.

This quiz is based on what i was shown by you guys up to the time of posting the puzzle. Some of you may of course have changed your schemes (for the better) since then. The similes and metaphors that hit me in the face are not criticisms of your designs at all--just auto images conjured up by one peculiar mind. Thanks for being so wonderfully entertaining with your bright design concepts!

1. the building will appear to flex itself, like Rubik’s snake

OBVIOUSLY BENSON’S. So easy...not fair!

2. my building will appear to move, like a walking insect

HWA LIK’S without a doubt
Incidentally the first pic is the album cover of the original sound track (long before the recent movie) narrated by the late actor Richard Burton. If you want to know how English should be spoken, grab that lp.)

3. like grandma’s Everest

SAY NO MORE---JON’S.

Grandmas visiting his original 5 level sky-view visitor centre will feel they have to climb Mt. Everest to get to what Jon’s on about. And even if they make it half of them will die of heart attacks up there. In which case the clue is still correct. They will be laid to Rest forEver somewhere in the plaza just outside his centre.

4. it will be quite a startling structure, like a useful Hiroshima

EURIC’S.
Sad, sad, sad…Hiroshima 1945. With pics of the victims of that atomic present. NEVER AGAIN!
Euric’s scheme, of course, fantastic though it might be, and a bit iconic and dreamy, has a wonderful precedent in the (proposed but not built) scheme in KL not so long ago. Somebody proposed a long snake-like tube of a commercial building over and along the Sg. Klang from the city centre to somewhere where Megamall is. Hovering over the river with legs that straddled each bank. I wish they’d built it. Euric will have a battle coming up with the jury. No problem. Just get your ammunition ready.


5. the experience for visitors will be like a stroll through Hades

JOHNEY SCARHEAD’S.

A subtle difference here. Hades is originally the Greek Hell, which the Christians took over to carry on the idea of Hell. So it’s Greco-Christian and not Taoist. So Effigies (Eugene’s) which are mainly Chinese would, though plausible, not be an accurate answer. And Johney’s scheme, if you’ve seen it, required you to actually walk across a bridge over the road to view the graveyard and then double back to look at some more coffins, etc. What a walk! (But he might have refined it by now.)

6. you might say my form is unusual, like a television sandwich

JINNO’S.

Everyone’s favorite…because it makes us all so hungry. In the old days this would not be such a good clue, but now with flatscreen and plasma and lcd screens and all…..

7. like an evolving shop house

HUI LIH’S.

You need to see the link between the fossilized and the new thing. And she has kept one old shophouse almost all intact, half renovated the next one before taking you into the new one next to the road. Enough evolution there for me, I reckon.

8. my building will make you smile as you think of a happier party in Boston

ROY’S.

The Boston Tea Party was an act of direct action by the American colonists against Great Britain in which they destroyed many crates of tea bricks on ships in Boston Harbor. The incident, which took place on Thursday, December 16, 1773, has been seen as helping to spark the American Revolution. (From Wikipedia)

…which of course led to the formation of the USA. War, as always, is never a happy thing. But our dear clever little friend, Roy Jak Hui, has come up with a delightful little tea visitor centre where the experience of tea drinking and tea packing happens in box-like houses randomly lined up along a bridge by the waterside. Thus, evoking those tea boxes floating in water that you see in the classic picture above. If he knows how to present it (and doesn’t come down with dengue or red, red stuff) then he’s headed for the sky. Clever little rascal!

9. like a maypole dance gone awry (haha)

VIDHYA’S.
Lots of slim spaces. I hope she pulls it off. You know what I mean. Awry because the ribbon spaces are not quite as ‘organized’ as the ribbons in the dance below…as if a storm had struck. But a dynamic composition, nevertheless, is hers.



10. like a pulmonary offering at Thaipusam

JOSHUA’S.

Of course. I’d already given the game away at the workshop tutorial when I said this infill project is a bit like a heart transplant. And the glass tubes of his (clever things to fill them with incense smoke) reminded me so much of those skewers in the second picture. And why not? We’re multicultural here. Esp.in Penang. [2nd pic is of skewer poking the tongue of a thaipusam devotee. Can't upload or the blog will crash again.] [Just added 2nd pic, sun 13 apr 08 8.55pm]

11. my building will be entertaining in itself, like the home of the woman who lived in a shoe

HAYDEN’S.

Hahaha. What more can I say? See how the toe part of the shoe crosses the street to touch your famous Triangle? Haha.

12. I am very conscious of relating to my neighbors: my building will be as gregarious as a kissing gourami

MAO YANG’S.
Ah! This one! It’s NOT a toss up between Kelvin’s and Mao Yang’s. If you’ve studied their plans---which I had the pleasure of doing---you’ll see that Mao Yang has his bits (like gourami lips) of his First Floor plan touching the back wall of the shophouses. The idea is to allow the shophouse owners to actually sell nyonya kuih and crafts over a counter to the visitors strolling in the Centre. The counters would have roller shutters for security during closing hours. The interaction between residents and visitors is win-win. “You spy into my house, taste my kuih, but pay me la. And free smells for the Centre.” Olfactory experiences are part of the poetic experience. (Have you lazy fellas read Juhani Pallasmaa’s ‘Hapticity and Time’ yet?)


Now, can somebody post everyone’s score here? How many upon 12?