Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Annexes and Parkinson
Convective thought, purely for my own amusement.
During the New Deal and especially during WW2, the government built thousands of "temporary" barracks for workers and soldiers. These structures were mostly torn down after WW2, but for some reason the barracks on college campuses remained.
The barracks became interesting places. They were often called Annexes, as in Math Annex or Art Annex. A lot of good research and experience happened in those Annexes. They contained disorganized collections of leftover WW2 equipment, which was scrounged and re-used for new purposes.
One of Parkinson's Laws: When an agency tears down its old disorganized buildings and puts up a new architectural marvel, you can be sure its PURPOSE and USEFUL WORK are finished. While an agency is engaged in real WORK, it doesn't have the spare time or money to hire architects; it doesn't even have enough spare time to clean out the old equipment in the barracks.
Those Annexes disappeared in the 80s, replaced or subsumed by grand monumental buildings. Colleges ceased to do WORK.
During this grotesque Coup we've been putting up some "temporary" hospitals. Now that they've turned out to be totally unnecessary because the Coup had nothing to do with a virus, will they remain and become interesting Annexes?
Labels: Asked and not worth asking, Parkinson
¶ 5:18 AM
