I'm starting a new category called "That doesn't make any sense", to be said the way that Johnnie Cochran said it in South Park (as in "Chewbacca is a Wookie. That doesn't make any sense."). The inspiration is this bizarre factoid I learned today - I.M. Pei is designing the NASCAR Musuem. Huh? Now, as an Atlanta resident, the NASCAR museum has been on my radar for some time since Atlanta was bidding to have the museum based here. Winston-Salem won, which I guess makes some kind of sense in terms of where NASCAR comes from or whatever (is Talladega Speedway there? We have the Georgia Motor Speedway here. David Cross wears a Georgia Motor Speedway t-shirt throughout most of the movie Run, Ronnie, Run. He's from here. It's a good movie.). Personally I think it's probably because they have even bigger hicks than we do. Anyway, obviosuly I could not have cared less whether Atlanta got a NASCAR museum or not, but I didn't for one nanosecond imagine that the project would get an amazing architect in his twilight years. Atlanta does not have many buildings by big-name architects (we have one Richard Meier, one Renzo Piano - and those two are the same place - plus two Michael Graves and one Philip Johnson; we are getting a David Chipperfield and a Santiago Calavatra - I am excited for the Calavatra; I fucking love him - he's one of the few I really love), so Pei would have been welcome as far as I'm concerned. I just can't imagine how that pitch meeting went. Did he pitch NASCAR or did NASCR pitch him? Is Pei a NASCAR fan? Did he shave a #3 into his back hair? So many questions!!!
1 comment:
I laughed when I read this and then remembered that I know someone who works for Pei and he told me about the project a couple years ago. It's going to have some kind of crazy roof that he tried to explain to me using hand gestures I didn't understand.
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