Basil Godevenos's Blog

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Sacrifice 628-4 had been walking across the ice for three days. He was cold, horribly cold, and he had only one piece of seal jerky left in his pack. He didn’t know how long a sacrifice was meant to walk on the surface before the Great Tizheruk consumed him – no-one knew – so they had provisioned him with the same supplies they gave every sacrifice, three days’ food and water. Sacrifice 628-4 had rationed it to last four days.

On the second morning of his trek he woke to see an arctic wolf, big as a pony, watching him from several paces away. He had brandished his small bone knife (the only tool allowed to a sacrifice) and shouted in a brave voice, but the wolf had made no move. It had simply followed him as he walked.

It was like that through the second and third days. A wolf would appear and join the growing pack that flanked and followed him. At night 628-4 thought he heard a few of them slink away – perhaps to hunt – although he never rose to see for himself. And though there were more than a few red muzzles in the morning, the wolves did not share their kill with him.

It was morning on the fourth day and 628-4 chewed his last piece of seal jerky slowly. And walked. The faint tracks his feet left in the light dusting of snow were quickly covered by wisps that blew across his path. The ice felt different than it had in previous days. 628-4 suspected that he had left solid ground and all that was between him and the abyss of the sea was a thin sheet of ice. He ignored the thought. He ignored the wolves. What else was he to do?

In time, a strange silhouette rose above the flat plain of ice. As 628-4 neared the object, he saw it was a body, half consumed by the layers of ice that had formed each day since the man had lain down and died. The badge on the dead man’s parka identified him as Sacrifice 627-9, one of last month’s offerings, and a known glutton.

It was not uncommon for sacrifices to fall into one vice or another. They lived a life apart, even from each other. The loveless existence of a sacrifice was a crippling void, begging to be filled. 628-4 supposed the dead man had eaten his entire ration of food on the first day and been too weak to carry on after two more days.

At dusk on the fourth day the wind carried the howling of many wolves to 628-4′s ears from a great distance. He counted his wolves (he thought of them as his, though he had begun to suspect, with no shortage of trepidation, that he was in fact theirs). They were all still with him.

As the sun dipped below the horizon 628-4 lay down to rest, and for the first time in his life, was unable to find sleep. The image of the dead man haunted him every time he closed his eyes. He wondered if it had been a difficult choice for 627-9 to abandon his mission, his one important contribution to his people. And where was he now?

Sacrifice 628-4 had been bred and raised as an offering. He had known from his earliest awareness that he would be fed to the Great Tizheruk, god-beast of the sea, in order to save his people from its hunger and wrath. Until now, his worth as a prophylactic against that wrath was the only value he had placed on his life. It wasn’t the pain that made him anxious – he had been trained to ignore pain – nor was it the dying. What chilled his blood more than the biting cold of the icy plain ever could was the possibility he might end up like the corpse he had passed that day, a waste, a failure.

Sacrifices were given the highest place in the Beyond-Life. But he wondered: What happened to a sacrifice who didn’t succeed in feeding Tizheruk? What use was he if he failed, would he even deserve a place in the Beyond-Life at all? He was out of food, and had no water left. He could die tonight as he slept, uneaten.

But that was not the worst of it; a still darker thought entered his mind: What if there was no Great Tizheruk? Perhaps all sacrifices simply died of exposure after running out of food and water and were swallowed up by the ice. Perhaps tomorrow he would find a scattering of half buried, frozen corpses, chunks of flesh missing where desperate predators had taken a cold meal. The thought of it sickened him. Such a waste.

One by one, his wolves moved in toward him. He bared his throat in a moment of weakness, giving into despair. The first wolf reached him and opened its fanged jaws. Sacrifice 628-4 closed his eyes, bracing himself for the brief, but final pain. Instead, there was warmth and wetness pressed against his cheek. The wolf was licking his face. Each wolf took its turn comforting him, pressing their bodies against his to keep him warm. The youngest wolf, barely past being a pup, nuzzled up inside his embrace and wriggled affectionately. It made him feel better, and finally he slept.

The fifth day dawned and 628-4 rose and walked. He ate nothing, for there was nothing to eat. He came to a place where the ice was thin enough to glimpse the darkness of the churning sea beneath. The debilitating cold was now eclipsed by the numbness of exhaustion, and fear of failure and despair began to creep back into his mind. He saw nothing for miles in any direction. No trace of the god-beast, no hope of reward in the Beyond-Life.

He plodded onward, his thoughts spiraling downward in a pattern of misery. He did not notice when his wolves stopped to sniff the air. He did not notice when as one they reached silent agreement and formed a line, facing him, blocking his path.

The firm resistance of warm fur stopped Sacrifice 628-4, jarring him back from the edge of that place where the mind itself goes numb with cold. He looked up and down the line of wolves. He saw it now: The affection of the wolves the night before had been a dream. There was no Great Tizheruk; his people fed themselves to these midnight predators who had been patiently stalking him to his death. His life had been a lie. He was not a sacrifice to a powerful and terrible god of the sea, but a meal for a common animal. A distracting morsel flung out in desperation by a people too timid to defend themselves against wolves on the hunt.

But the wolves did not fall upon in a frenzied feed. Instead, the largest of them padded up to him and bowed, then moved off to the side. One by one, the other wolves followed. A few nuzzled his face in a gesture of affection. All of them, though their faces lacked human expression, somehow looked sad. When each finished its part in the ceremony, it moved off to join a large ring forming around him.

Finally it was the smallest wolf’s turn to pay her respects to 628-4. The one who had slept in his arms the night before. She made her bow and, despite her effort to steel her will, a whimper escaped her throat. Then the little wolf abandoned all propriety and pressed herself against his leg, howling. Sacrifice knelt and wrapped his arms around her, kissing the soft fur of her forehead, calming her cries. An older wolf interrupted the embrace, picked her up and took her to her place in the ring.

Sacrifice 628-4 looked at the circle of animals; whatever was going to happen, was going to happen now. He stood ready to face it. The wolves began thumping the thin ice with their huge paws in time to a rhythm they shared. The pattern repeated over and over for what seemed like an eternity. Day turned to night, and still they beat their rhythm. Then the ice beneath 628-4′s feet began to shake as if the sea beneath it boiled. He looked down and saw a bright light, deep in the water, rising rapidly toward him. Then the ice broke.

The force of the rupture knocked 628-4 on his back. When he rose, a vision of untold glory stood before him. It was the Great Tizheruk; it had to be. It was monstrous, terrible, and beautiful beyond anything 628-4 could have imagined. Its body was molten silver, shining brightly with inner light. Its six eyes were burning rubies that pierced his mind as easily as a needle pierces silk. Its lengthy bulk was segmented and tapered to a sort of pointed tail. Each section plated in shining armor. It had two powerful, almost skeletal, limbs ending in glimmering talons. The joints in its limbs made a faint whirring sound as they flexed.

Sacrifice 628-4 could not look away, nor did he want to. The god-beast’s armor seemed to flow like quicksilver, mesmerizing him as it hauled itself out of the water and onto the ice. Its song, a high, lilting croon, not unlike that of a whale, hypnotized him. As Tizheruk approached, 628-4 saw that luminous patterns moved in rapid lines and spirals on its gleaming mirrored skin. Strange, detailed symbols writhed in unpredictable paths up and down the length of its massive body.

628-4 had prepared for this moment his entire life. He had been born to die at this magnificent … thing’s … hand. And yet, when faced with the reality of it, the concept was so alien, so foreign to his mind. How could something this beautiful, this glorious, have any interest at all in him, a man who didn’t even have his own name? Sacrifice 628-4 wept in gratitude.

It was only when the monster-god loomed directly above him that 628-4 saw it had no mouth. How would the Great Tizheruk eat him? Then 628-4 was bathed in a wide beam of warm, white light, emanating from the god-beast’s belly. The not-quite-whalesong crescendoed, and the wolves began to howl. 628-4 felt himself begin to dissolve; his hands and feet first, and then the rest of him. In the last moments before he was gone he turned his head and found the youngest wolf, the she-pup who had shown him love. He fixed his eyes on her until he had no eyes. Until he was one with Tizheruk.

The wolves saw something then, something they had never seen before. The Great Tizheruk, the hungry god of the deep, did not simply slip back under the waves. Instead it moved toward them, toward the young she-pup. They scrambled to protect her – this was not the agreement. No wolf was to be harmed! But the pup broke free of their grasping, protective jaws and ran to meet the monster. The Great Tizheruk bent its mouthless head and touched its foremost point to the soft fur of the she-pup’s forehead, where Sacrifice 628-4 had kissed her. It looked longingly to the stars, shining in the darkening sky. And then the Great Tizheruk fell away beneath the ice, back from where it had come.

The User: Hill’s Pet Nutrition Primary Healthcare Centre at the Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph

The Challenge: Recording and streaming video from multiple patient care facilities for live remote viewing and on-demand access by students

The Solution: TouchStream

The Benefits: “TouchStream allows us to meet the learning objectives we’ve set out for our students and to expand our influence in veterinary medicine globally.”

Hill’s Pet Nutrition Primary Healthcare Centre at the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph is a state of the art experiential learning facility. Student veterinarians develop enhanced skills, competence and confidence in providing primary (or routine) healthcare to pets and their families. The Centre is highly innovative, with an integrated curriculum focused on general and preventive medicine, communication skills, nutrition, rehabilitation, behaviour, animal welfare, public health and good citizenship. The Centre includes a full-service general clinic offering student-delivered veterinary services to the public. Student learning and client care is overseen by a dedicated healthcare delivery team of veterinarians, veterinary technicians, animal care and customer service specialists.

To support their mandates, the Centre sought a user-friendly solution to capture video and audio from multiple patient care and procedure rooms simultaneously, stream it live for immediate remote observation and store it for on-demand access via the web. Dr. Shane Bateman, DVM, DVSc, DACVECC is the Director of Hill’s Pet Nutrition Primary Healthcare Centre. “We required both live streaming for immediate viewing and an archival system for students to review asynchronously for performance review and reflection – key components of skills-based learning,” says Bateman. A lynchpin component of the Centre’s solution is a set of 20 TouchStream LE live streaming encoder appliances from Digital Rapids. The TouchStream units, supplied and deployed by systems integrator Design Electronics, stream and record medical procedures, interviews and other clinical activities.

Twenty locations in the Centre, including patient care and procedure rooms, are equipped with closed-circuit TV cameras as well as omni-directional microphones suspended from the ceiling. Analog audio and video – a mix of composite and S-video signals – are fed from each room to the 20 TouchStream LE units, which are rack-mounted in one central location within the building. The Centre’s TouchStream appliances are outfitted with optional internal hard disk storage, allowing the captured footage from each room to be stored as archival Windows Media (VC-1) WMV files as well as streamed live in the Windows Media format.

A key requirement of the project was for staff to be able to start and stop the recording and streaming process instantly and easily from each room. The TouchStream appliances are controlled through commands issued via the HTTP protocol by a Crestron control system, allowing streaming and archiving to be activated with one button-push, and stopped with another. LEDs on each button provide true feedback indicating whether the unit is recording or not. The units can also be controlled and monitored via an Apple iPad application, with a single control page showing the status of all 20 locations as well as the time they have been running for. The ability of TouchStream to integrate with the third-party components and control system was a key benefit to the Centre, and contributes significantly to the overall system’s ease-of-use.

“The TouchStream solution plays a crucial role in allowing over 400 student veterinarians immediate and asynchronous access to observe and learn from the clinical activities of the Centre – from anywhere on the Web,” says Bateman. It is important in a teaching facility such as Hill’s Pet Nutrition Primary Healthcare Centre that students are not only able to watch medical and surgical procedures as they are performed, but also that they are able to review their performance during patient interviews and procedures in which they participated. TouchStream’s ability to simultaneously stream and archive the video enables the Centre to provide maximum learning opportunities to students both on-site and remotely.

The Centre is evaluating increasing the capacity of their video archive to collect and review data over multiple years, enabling them to further research, evaluate and improve their effectiveness in achieving their overall goal – graduating more confident and competent veterinarians, able to adapt to practicing veterinary medicine in small businesses quickly and easily. Bateman also has designs for the Centre to become a wider-reaching teaching facility, “The Centre seeks to be an international learning centre by developing communication links and opportunities for two-way learning between student veterinarians studying all over the globe.” Adding TouchStream’s web-streaming capabilities to their programs is a major step towards that goal.

Digital Rapids’ TouchStream live streaming and archive encoding appliance has enabled Hill’s Primary Healthcare Centre to also meet its local goals. “The use of this technology in an academic environment allows us to meet the learning objectives we’ve set out for our students,” says Bateman. “Furthermore, it showcases to prospective students our commitment to their success, and creates a value-added dimension to clients who choose the Centre to provide veterinary care to their pets – they see how important learning is to us, and how they contribute directly to the education of our students.”

one-sheet promo for a 1-hr TV drama series

Steam Punks have all the fun.

Benjamin Silver – handsome… debonair… assassin… with a license to kill anything that won’t die. Most men live one life – hopefully to the fullest. Secret Agent Benjamin Silver, isn’t most men.

After resting in peace for barely a day, his body is reanimated – using the experimental technology known as electricity. Once an old man of 70, he is now a vigorous 30-year-old. And back in the game…

In the age of steam, airships, and the hansom cab, two great factions of immortal thugs clash over the future of the human race. Benjamin Silver is the only key to ending this war.

With his pearl-handled Colt revolver at his hip, sexy inventor, Lucy Lightstone, by his side, and poison-for-blood coursing through his veins, Ben’s mission is to foil the plans for world domination of an ancient society calling themselves the Overlords.

Each week, Benjamin has to deal with yet another scheme – more diabolical than the last. And he’d better watch his back. There are other assassins out there – and the price on his head could buy all the tea in China… with enough left over to buy six billion souls.

If he succeeds in bringing to an end the eons-old war between the Overlords, and his employers – the Protectors – he may just be allowed to die… and stay dead.

Haunted by memories of hundreds of years of loves lost and sins committed, Benjamin’s mind can’t take much more. But he’s not going anywhere before he exacts vengeance on the men who made him what he is today.

Tension is stressful. It’s difficult. It demands attention. But only tension can strengthen an otherwise soft and pliable material. Without tension, the tightrope walker could not keep her balance on the rope.

Life is like a rope; a tangled, hard to navigate mess. The tension of competing desires and ideas is what makes us able to strike a balance; find a solution that solves more than one problem; improve our lives and the lives of others.

Tension can be something necessary and good, like the tension of the acrobat’s rope. It can also rise from conflict, demanding a solution. But even the tension of competing forces and interests isn’t all bad (though it may be uncomfortable). The simplest engine works only because two gears are rotating in opposite directions. Whole religions are founded on this principle.

We think and talk about tension as if it is something to avoid, that makes life unpleasant, that sours an otherwise happy occasion. But that simply isn’t true. Avoiding tension only avoids the most direct path forward to a better life. When you avoid confronting a friend who wronged you, you rob yourself of the most direct path towards a better friendship.

As Christians, we experience constant tension between keeping God at the center of our lives and engaging with and being relevant to the godless world around us. As a prisoner in Babylon, Daniel felt the same tension, called by God to serve the king who had all but destroyed Israel.

Fluid 2013 will introduce you to tension in a new light and give you the tools to live and work through it to better reflect the light of Christ to those around you.

Tension can be a gift, a tool. After all, if you don’t walk the tightrope, you have to figure out how to fly to the other platform, or not get there at all.

Tension is stressful. It’s difficult. It demands attention. But only tension can strengthen an otherwise soft and pliable material. Without tension, the tightrope walker could not keep her balance on the rope.

Life is like a rope; a tangled, hard to navigate mess. The tension of competing desires and ideas is what makes us able to strike a balance; find a solution that solves more than one problem; improve our lives and the lives of others.

Tension can be something necessary and good, like the tension of the acrobat’s rope. It can also rise from conflict, demanding a solution. But even the tension of competing forces and interests isn’t all bad (though it may be uncomfortable). The simplest engine works only because two gears are rotating in opposite directions. Whole religions are founded on this principle.

We think and talk about tension as if it is something to avoid, that makes life unpleasant, that sours an otherwise happy occasion. But that simply isn’t true. Avoiding tension only avoids the most direct path forward to a better life. When you avoid confronting a friend who wronged you, you rob yourself of the most direct path towards a better friendship.

As Christians, we experience constant tension between keeping God at the center of our lives and engaging with and being relevant to the godless world around us. As a prisoner in Babylon, Daniel felt the same tension, called by God to serve the king who had all but destroyed Israel.

Fluid 2013 will introduce you to tension in a new light and give you the tools to live and work through it to better reflect the light of Christ to those around you.

Tension can be a gift, a tool. After all, if you don’t walk the tightrope, you have to figure out how to fly to the other platform, or not get there at all.

“You hire the best, and the best get hired.”

Knowing What to Look For

To build the best business, you need the best people in the right positions. At Robertson & Company, that’s a principle we live by. Our extensive knowledge of your industry enables us to understand precisely what your organization’s needs are and how best to fulfill them.

Within days of you engaging our services, we build a list of target organizations and a job description tailored specifically to your needs, designed to attract the perfect person to fill that role. We know exactly where to find people who have the expertise and experience you’re looking for. Because we know where to look, and what to look for, we can narrow down a short list of prospective candidates efficiently and effectively.

Insightful Selection

The recruiters at Robertson & Company are highly trained experts. We’ve put the best people for our business in place so that we can find the best people for your business. Each approach, each phone call, each interview is conducted with the utmost care, respect and discretion. As your ambassadors, courting your prospective candidates, we present nothing less than your best face.

We delve deeply into each candidate’s qualifications and past successes. Whether a candidate is already in our database or completely new to us, we make absolutely certain he or she meets or exceeds the criteria you require.

Making it Stick

When we present a candidate to you with our recommendation, we work with you and that candidate, smoothing the process of presenting and negotiating your offer. It’s important that you, the employer, hire an executive who knows he or she is making the best career move possible. Robertson & Company supports you through the negotiation and hiring process and beyond, ensuring every match we make is a perfect one.

Executives

You’re not intimidated by heights. In the ongoing climb to the top, you know how important it is to carefully plan out the path you will take; to be sure of your next step. Robertson & Company will move you upward and on to the next stage of your career. We’ll back you into the one corner you’ll enjoy – the corner office. Your first one, your next one, your best one.

We have two decades under our belt as a premier financial executive recruitment firm. Our expertise is unmatched and our commitment to discretion is paramount. With a reach that extends across Canada, the Americas, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, no one is more qualified to see to your success than we are.

Robertson & Company can give you the advice you need to position yourself for your next big move. Our staff are experts in recruitment and we’ll work with you and prospective employers, negotiating on your behalf efficiently and discretely, to get you the position you want with the compensation you deserve.

Ghost written for Jeff Sobel, Chief Engineer, The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus

The Challenge: High quality, multi-bitrate, live web streaming from traveling mobile studio

The Solution: StreamZHD

The Benefits: “StreamZHD has given us multi-stream encoding functionality…resulting in more people viewing our productions in the best quality possible. It has also increased stream reliability, which has fostered greater confidence in our productions.”

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is a non-profit organization that serves as a living legacy to John Lennon by providing young people across the US and Canada free access to hands-on music and video creation. On the bus is a state-of-the-art, mobile audio and HD video recording and production facility and now in its sixteenth year, it continues to provide students and emerging artists alike with studio tours and participation in free song-writing and multimedia production workshops. With the assistance and guidance of professional engineers on board the bus, students learn how to write, perform, record, and produce original songs; produce and shoot music videos and documentaries; and create complete broadcast quality music video deliverables.

The Bus is highly adaptable. It has been designed to provide students, schools and their communities with performances, demonstrations, remote recordings, and studio sessions customized for their needs, levels of experience and interest. The Bus is able to produce live multi-camera video productions streamed to the web in real time. All projects created on board are available for viewing on our website (lennonbus.org), YouTube, and Facebook.

The Lennon Bus provides a variety of creative technical opportunities for students. Several of our workshops include live web streams produced in the Bus’s studios. These live web programs frequently include celebrity guests and live music performances. Student producers need reliable tools so their learning experience is productive, efficient, and reflects real world broadcast scenarios with industry-standard equipment. We want our students to get hands-on experience with the same equipment they’ll encounter in professional studios should they enter the industry. And since we are often producing shows featuring A-list celebrities, quality and reliability are critically important.

We also needed to be able to stream multi-bitrate video with state-of- the-art codecs and have complete control over the streams’ specifications. The StreamZHD from Digital Rapids was by far the best solution that fit our application. Its availability in a 1RU size is unprecedented in a unit this powerful and reliable. Digital Rapids has a reputation for quality and reliability. Our streaming infrastructure partner, TodoCast, emphatically recommended a Digital Rapids encoder as the best solution for us. The StreamZHD allowed TodoCast to configure the streams to exactly the specifications at which their infrastructure works best.

The StreamZHD is mounted in a sound-isolated compartment. It receives digital video input over HD-SDI, typically from a NewTek TriCaster 855 integrated multi-channel production system during live shows. The StreamZHD encodes and outputs multiple web and mobile streams transmitted over a TodoCast/GlobeComm satellite with 2Mbps uplink. From the 1080i HD-SDI input, the StreamZHD encodes and outputs multiple concurrent H.264 streams ranging from HD to mobile resolutions.

Adding the StreamZHD has given us multi-stream encoding functionality that allows viewers to watch the stream in a quality that better suits their capabilities, resulting in more people viewing our productions in the best quality possible. It has also increased stream reliability, which has fostered greater confidence in our productions.

We also recently launched the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus in Europe. A completely new, custom designed vehicle was unveiled in Liverpool in the United Kingdom on May 8, 2013. We are looking forward to bringing the Digital Rapids encoding quality and reliability to our European vehicle in our live streaming programs there.

Toronto – Fluorescent light glints on the edge of the sharp knife as nimble hands move back and forth. Blood trickles into the gutter. The cutting board gutter, of course.

A George Brown Continuing Education Culinary Arts instructor, who prefers to remain un-named, is at home in her own small galley kitchen. She’s testing recipes she will later demonstrate to one of her evening classes.

“I’m incensed,” she says as she chops and slices. She’s referring to today and tomorrow’s unionization vote for part-time and sessional instructors at George Brown.

She spends about seven unpaid hours a week prepping for classes at home like she is right now. You would think her anger would be directed at management, but you’d be wrong.

“Oh yeah,” she says, “I’m against unionization … I have the support of my management.”

Speaking to this instructor, you wonder why the issue is even being put to a vote at all. “We’re a happy bunch. I have tremendous job satisfaction. The issues [facing Con-Ed instructors] are so minimal.” But she didn’t seem eager to discuss the issues themselves.

Jade Thomson answers the phone with a cheerful “Hello.” Her cockney accent comes through loud and clear. She’s a landed immigrant and has been studying quantity surveying part-time at George Brown for 10 months. She’s the kind of woman who pays close attention to the world around her.

Did Jade know there was a unionization vote this week? “No I did not.”

That’s not all that surprising, though Jade was certainly surprised. In the week of the vote, the ‘News’ section of George Brown’s website proudly displays that the college is among Canada’s top 100 employers, but information about the upcoming labour vote is nowhere to be found, at least nowhere within a reasonable amount of digging.

When asked if she would support the unionization of her instructors, Jade said, “Yes. Everybody should have fair rights. But they shouldn’t be allowed to strike for as long as York did. Teachers are an essential service.”

If there was a lengthy strike, Jade might consider switching to another school. “I have a schedule for finishing my program.” To teachers’ unions who strike for too long, she has this to say: “You can’t throw your pacifier out of your pram and expect people to keep picking it up for you.”

If the anonymous culinary arts instructor is to be believed, Jade has little to worry about from George Brown staff. “The only real frustrations we have are from the daytime staff not doing their job, keeping [the classrooms] clean. We’re also seen as the scapegoats for everything. Something goes wrong, it’s Con-Ed’s fault. We’re seen as second class.”

Would forming a union solve that? “Not at all. The daytime staff are unionized; they’re miserable as shit.”

The rebirth of human society can be attributed as much to the innovators and pioneers of today as it can be to the legacy left behind by those who came before. Among the ruins of the great cities of our predecessors, the work of one architect rises to outshine all others. It is this Unknown Architect’s ingenuity and commitment to sustainability that we owe our ability to build a new infrastructure, bypassing many of our ancestors’ mistakes.

Nothing is known about the Unknown Architect’s personal life, but it can be said with certainty that their work was prolific, revolutionary and in high demand. Near the beginning of our new society’s short history, as we began to reconnect the scattered remnants of the human race, we exchanged our knowledge and our stories.

One fact soon became clear; every successful society had in their possession, remnants of buildings designed by the Unknown Architect. Archaeologists and art historians have analyzed the old buildings – the Seed Buildings, as they are sometimes called – and have determined that they are all indeed the work of the same, Unknown Architect. Every world-class city from The Time Before features a Seed Building designed by the Unknown Architect: New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, London, Toronto, Dubai, Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, Berlin, Moscow, Singapore, Jerusalem and others all have at least one building that bears the signature design sensibility of the Unknown Architect. It was from these Seed Buildings that we learned the ways to build a beautiful and functional world. From these Seeds we grew environments that have supported and nurtured us throughout our rebirth as a people.

When future archaeology reveals our architectural legacies, will yours be among them?

Centuries from now, archeologists will unearth monuments from the present. These will tell a story of people applying advanced thinking and materials toward a viable future. Kingspan is dedicated to helping architects build legacies that will endure, with Insulated Metal Panels that offer exceptional energy efficiency, while capturing every nuance of your signature design.

Legacies take many forms and our Kingspan Legacy Competition is one of them. To enter the competition and to see more of the Unknown Architect Exhibit, visit LegaciesAreBuilt.com

Healthy Environment Learning Project (HELP) (Sydney)

This is a fragment of an Insulated Metal Panel, used in the Healthy Environment Learning Project (HELP) in Sydney, Australia, c. 2017. HELP blended seamlessly with Sydney Harbour’s natural environment. It generated all of its own power, treated collected rainwater and filtered wastewater with naturally occurring biological systems.

Manhattan Arcology (New York)

This fragment is from a wall of the Manhattan Arcology, c. 2047. An octahedron suspended on legs that spanned the breadth of the north end of Manhattan Island, the Manhattan Arcology housed over a million people. Living, work and leisure spaces intermingled with green spaces, supported by a core of sustainable infrastructure and the most advanced urban farm of its time.

Gulf Coast Habitat (New Orleans)

A piece of the roof section of The Gulf Coast Habitat, c 2021. It was the most self-sustaining building of the day. Instead of a single building, the Habitat is a flotilla of interconnected structures, built on buoyant foundations designed to rise and fall with the water level. As the sea swallowed New Orleans during the worst of the storms, the Habitat survived, housing tens of thousands of people.

Spirit Arts Center (Los Angeles)

Digitally restored recreations of the Center show an ebony jewel glinting with chrome accents and thousands of solar-powered LEDs. During the day it stood as a monolithic monument to the art of a generation and on clear nights it blended with the starry sky.

Museum of Modern Culture (London)

Although little of the structure remains in place today, the Museum of Modern Culture in London, England was once a shining example of high function blended with high art. The museum stood on the north bank of the River Thames, a cathedral of crystal mirrors. Its entire surface was a network of solar energy collectors, and subterranean conduits as well as preserved documentation found on the museum’s site suggest that it not only provided enough electricity for itself, but also for several surrounding blocks of urban London.

Men de Mingxing Spaceport (Hong Kong)

Men de Mingxing Spaceport was built at the height of the space tourism industry. Built on an artificial extension of the island of Hong Kong made from clean waste, Men de Mingxing was a stunning marriage of form and function. Heat and wind captured from rocket launches powered every conceivable automated convenience for passengers.

Aquatic Athletics Centre (Toronto)

The entire Centre was partially submerged in Lake Ontario and used naturally purified lake water to fill its pools. A canopy of ultrathin tempered glass shaped like crashing waves and swirling water floated on a lightweight transparent structure, giving the impression that the whole building was a foaming wave on the lake, frozen in time. Natural solar heat focused through the canopy heated the pools.