December 2022 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Behold, the Dude Perfect Company’s proposed new headquarters — “Trick Shot Town” — preferably for North Dallas (but actually any other place in the USA that will give them preferential permitting treatment and maybe tax abatement). Dude Perfect is a team of five dudes who formed the Dude Perfect tribe at Texas A & M and built a goofball sports YouTube channel of 58-million subscribers. The project is ten acres: five for the building and five for parking cars and “outside events.” Step right up mayors of America!

Now, let’s unpack this little: Our country (that’d be the USA) is sliding into an epic economic discontinuity, which is something an order of magnitude greater than a Great Depression. It will alter everything about daily life for us, especially the current concept of leisure time (there won’t be much of that, and it won’t be devoted to consumer products and engineered entertainments). There also won’t be much in the way of Happy Motoring anymore, either, so parking will be unnecessary. “Outdoor events” of the future will be mainly planting, weeding, and harvesting. Just sayin’.

As for the building itself, well… its startling meaninglessness and incoherence nicely represents its programming, a monument to trick shots.

Thanks to Tim Hayduk for the nomination!