MONSTERPIECES: ONCE UPON A TIME . . . OF THE 2000S! :

What is the Agbar Tower? A Headquarters. Why this shape? The oblong top of the Tower creates an optimized environment to raise a war cyborg. What is the Casa da Musica? A swimming pool! Why that form? To collect sea water in the autumn. This collection of kids’ bestiaries is a critique of Monster Contemporary Architecture. It is a reinterpretation of contemporary iconic forms and the contemplation of the future states of these masterpieces, or more fittingly, Monsterpieces. Two Harvard architecture graduates challenge their minds un-learning architecture history. They speculate on the future state of post-occupancy of contemporary architectural icons, creating a retrospective of future archeological studies. A response and critique of iconic perFORMance — the current architectural trend in competing for attention — this fiction tells the story of building forms that do follow function. In this book, each eccentric form finds its justification in a speculative function, with surreal and dystopian connotations. The Casa da Musica is now a swimming pool, and Selfridge Birmingham is a prison for TV addicts, nothing more, nothing less.