Word: architecte
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...visitors on a slow walking tour of Havana's labyrinthine Palacio de la Revolucion, Castro gestures toward an enormous mosaic of birds, animals and flowers that dominates the reception hall and quietly begins a story. The artist, he explains, cast the ceramic tiles at the same time the architect was completing the building's interior. Through some misunderstanding between the two men, the ceiling was built too low. When it came time to install the intricately etched tiles, the top two rows did not fit. The artist never forgave the architect whose miscalculations robbed his mosaic of its crown...
Someone asks what became of the architect. Was he fired for his mistake? Contemplating the missing top rows, Castro shrugs. ``No,'' he deadpans, testing his listeners' sense of humor. ``He was shot.'' Then Castro roars with laughter at his joke, a parody of his image as a bloodthirsty dictator. And with that, the evening and the aging commandant suddenly come alive...
Before that comes a sketch of a youngish architect, Kay Fischer, who is trying to launch a career in Los Angeles in 1936. She meets a man named Salvador Carriscant, who claims to be her father, and eventually she accompanies him to Lisbon, where he promises to substantiate his story. That story is what follows. Why introduce it in such a distracting way? Maybe the author indulged in a little showboating. He is an expert mimic of the Hollywood hardboiled school, typified by Raymond Chandler. Good nostalgic fun, but Boyd shares Chandler's awkwardness in writing from a woman...
...Rott, 73, a Prague architect and writer, is astonished at the revival. ``For 50 years only a few circumcisions were done here,'' he says. ``It was difficult to gather the 10 men required to hold Sabbath prayers.'' Now Prague's Altneu Schul, the main synagogue, holds services daily, and three study groups meet weekly to explore Jewish religion and culture. ``My grandchildren,'' says Rott, ``know more about being Jewish than my children do.'' Although Prague's Jewish community is minuscule--numbers range from the officially registered 1,400 up to an estimated 3,000--hundreds more are showing an interest...
...they have to sell tons of souvenirs, T shirts, replicas and cultural-tourist boutique stuff; it's like the religious-kitsch racket in Lourdes or Jerusalem. The entrance foyer duly gives onto the shop and a meeting room and a children's art studio and a conference theater; the architect calls the foyer an internal piazza, but its main use is probably for giving parties-just as, in New York City, the giant glass hangar containing the Met's Temple of Dendur has devolved into the only post-Ptolemaic discotheque in the world...