I’ve been watching a program called “Impossible Builds” on our local PBS station on Wednesday nights (until they started up yet another of their endless fundraising marathons—sigh) and have found myself equally tickled and saddened by it all. (That’s a pretty hard pair of emotions to hold onto at the same time!) The series will include an office tower in New York City, but so far the three projects showcased have all been luxury homes, either downtown condos (in Miami) or vacation homes (in the U.A.E. and, I think, Saudi Arabia). And while I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching these episodes, I’ve been struck by how . . . pointless it all is. Constructing these buildings is an exercise in conspicuous consumption and public display, no more and no less. Take, for example, the “floating house” build. (I don’t think I’d better post a picture of it here, as I’m sure I’d be violating copyright laws, but you can see some pictures of it by following the link above.) The idea is that it’s like a super-dee-dooper houseboat, with the added attraction that the main bedroom is below the water and has a giant glass wall that allows you to see into the ocean. (It’s like a glass-bottomed boat, only more so.) So you can lie on your bed and watch the fish swim by. You can also (I’m not making this up, I promise) feast your eyes on the coral-covered rocks, with said coral having been artificially stimulated to grow faster. There were serious scientists working on that, um, problematic aspect of the project.
When the house was first lowered into the water (quite a dramatic accomplishment in itself) the bedroom glass wall leaked. Surprise! I think they had to get it back out again in order to re-caulk it. They keep talking about how “fragile” the thing is, and how careful they have to be in moving it around. Now I ask you, How well would you sleep knowing all that’s separating you from the gushing waters is a wall of glass that failed in its first test? I guess if you like bedding down in a life jacket, and you’re sure there’s a clear path for the water to sweep you upstairs, well . . . . (And, last but not least, that window needs constant cleaning. It’s a magnet for the fish and also for algae. So, get this—divers have to go down regularly, like every few days, to clean it. You’re a professional diver, and you’re doing window cleaning! I guess you can drown your sorrows at the bar in the evening along with the scientists tasked with growing the coral.)
I said above that the whole thing seems so pointless. In actual fact, there is a point, which is to make money. Nothing wrong with that! But I noticed over and over again in these three episodes that the potential buyers were routinely called “investors.” There’s a tremendous push to make the reality of the buildings match the promotional materials, which contained digitized renditions of what the final product is supposed to be like. There are also time constraints, as there are with any project, so that there’s always a last-minute push and panic as the final finishes are applied and the furnishings are put in place for the prototype. I kept thinking, ‘But who’s going to actually buy these things? How are they going to be used?’ Two of the builds are of individual units that will become part of big developments. One (not this one) is requiring that sand islands in the U.A.E. harbor be artificially strengthened before the units are put in place. Unbelievable effort and anxiety occurs as these structures are made; if they fail, the luxury vacation homes sitting on top of them will sink. (Sort of like Venice, but without the tourist attractions.) I kept wondering, ‘How will these people get their groceries, way out there on these islands?’ But silly me. They’ll have staff who will take the boat and go into Abu Dhabi and get them! I just can’t quite figure out how much fun it would actually be to stay in either of these individual units, out in the middle of nowhere. (The third build is a luxury condo tower in the middle of Miami, so you can at least go down to the corner drugstore if you need toothpaste.) Which I guess is probably the point: the owners wouldn’t stay there, at least not very much. They’d use the place as a staging area for dinners and parties to impress other multi-millionaires. And they can go swimming in the pool and lie on the bed and watch the fish. If the development goes as planned, they’ll probably be able to watch their neighbors doing the same thing, as the units are going to be pretty close together. It almost sounds like a very, very high-class . . . trailer park. (No slam intended on trailer parks! I spent the first few years of my life living in one. But you don’t usually expect to spend millions to live there.)
Well, this post has taken on a somewhat snarky tone. (Somewhat?) So maybe I’d better quit. Just think, though, of that underwater window the next time you look at the smudges your kids left on the glass patio door. It should give you some perspective.