Architecture

It was the first—and maybe only—building to be constructed sarcastically. From conception to finish, every single step was steeped in the thickest of irony. It had no purpose, except to be an inherent repudiation of its own existence.

The investors put up the money with snickers and eye rolls, the only earnestness being their self-satisfaction about going through with such an elaborate joke. The design process was pointedly ridiculous, with every detail in the blueprints being either intentionally ornate or harshly boring. The materials were all ordered in voices that conveyed nothing but the deepest derision. The workers were all recruited with notices so tongue-in-cheek that it wasn’t even clear they would be paid; the attraction wasn’t the money, it was the concept. The builders all giggled with due petulance as they poured the concrete, erected the steel beams, ran the wires, installed the drywall, and secured the windowpanes. At the grand opening, the mayor shucked and jived while cutting the ribbon with oversized scissors. (Of course, cutting a ribbon with oversized scissors is an action so clichéd by this point that it could not be taken any way other than as an affectation.) The first people to tour the completed building were all aware of the edifice’s intrinsically meta nature, and as they ooh’d and ah’d and took pictures, they did it all in distinctly exaggerated tones.

The building stood for months, empty and unused, for to actually use it would defeat its central purpose ...