At lunchtime I parked in the garage next to the Opera Galleria downtown on Mason Street. I went inside and went up to the second floor, a mezzanine level, and began looking at the doors of the offices. A guy coming out of one of the offices saw me and asked who I was looking for.
"--- ---- Workshop," I said. The name stumped him.
"A design firm, architects..." I added.
He thought a second. "Did they just move in?"
"Yeah," I said. "They used to be up on the third floor." I pointed up towards the ceiling of the Galleria.
He thought they were in the corner of the floor, where I was heading anyway. The sign next to the door was for a property management firm, but ignored it and went inside anyway. It was suite of mostly empty office rooms. I could see and hear people in the back corner, so I went there and found four men of varying ages sitting at a very long and mostly bare office table, two on each side. They were all behind large computer monitors. Light was streaming through the window behind them.
When he saw me, the guy with round glasses sitting in the corner of the room stood up as I walked towards him.
We shook hands warmly.
"You really do mean the northeast corner of the building," I said to him, jokingly. My friend Randy is precise that way.
He introduced me to the three other guys there, one of whom, the youngest, reminded me that we had been introduced previously, when I was here last spring. But now they have added employees, a bigger team in their new offices.
Before the two of us left to go for lunch, my friend showed me some of the work on one of his designer's monitors. It was for one of their projects in Bangkok, a large multi-use complex. It was intriguing and elaborate, very pleasing the eye. It would make a nice building.
It reminded me of some of the work that Randy had showed me back in his old office in Los Angeles, but it reflected the evolution of experience in his ideas and vision since then.
My friend had leveled up.
No comments:
Post a Comment