Chapter 26. Extra Innings
“Did you say the results are out?”
Team Leader Seungjin got up and in a single stride came right up to Director Yoo-uk’s desk.
Assistant Manager Soomin’s lips trembled in tension.
In contrast, Geonshin calmly kept writing something frantically on his laptop.
“Yeah. Right… they said the results are out. It’ll be tough, but we’ve got no choice, we have to prepare for what’s next.”
“What’s next. Ha… we lost, didn’t we?”
Seeing Team Leader Seungjin lower his head, Assistant Manager Soomin also sank back into her seat.
Then Director Yoo-uk stood up and said to the team members,
“Ah. What are you doing. I told you we have to prepare for what’s next.”
“…Pardon?”
“We’ve got to prepare for extra innings. Extra innings!”
“Extra innings? Then…!”
Eyes widening, Team Leader Seungjin stared straight through Director Yoo-uk’s face, which was full of mischief.
And Director Yoo-uk looked at the team and burst out laughing, laughter he had been holding back.
“Yeah. A 2 to 2 tie. It’s a tie. Wahahahaha! We’re going into extra innings! We got over one hump, we did, we did!”
“R-really? It’s really a tie?!”
“This isn’t the time to just be happy, Soomin. You have to pull two more all-nighters now. Do you have any plans or something?”
“N-no. I don’t have any plans. What’s two days! I can do all-nighters for a whole week!”
Soomin’s crying face had already turned into a smile. What was two days? She was ready to throw her whole body into it.
First of all, getting a tie meant their proposal had landed. Not only were they a step further from the fear that Division 7 might be disbanded, but just being acknowledged for the fact that they had worked themselves to death made her happy.
Director Yoo uk said, “Let’s enjoy it for five minutes. Any more than that is still a luxury.”
Assistant Manager Soomin clapped, and Team Leader Seungjin, his tension releasing, seemed to have a dry throat and just kept drinking water.
But in the middle of this, Geonshin, far from being happy, kept focusing on his laptop and working.
Only then did the team members feel something was odd about Geonshin’s appearance and said,
“Geonshin? Did you hear? It’s a tie.”
“Hey. Na Geonshin! But what have you been doing this whole time. Don’t tell me you’re doing an assignment at a moment like this.”
Feeling puzzled, Team Leader Seungjin came closer and looked at Geonshin’s laptop. Then he gave a small snort of a laugh, turned back around, and shook his head.
“This guy is something else.”
Geonshin had already been thinking about and writing the presentation scenario they would use for the student vote since yesterday.
Startled by Team Leader Seungjin’s reaction, Director Yoo-uk hurried over to Geonshin’s side.
“No, Na Geonshin. How did you know this would happen and you were preparing this? What would you have done if we lost?”
“It’s not like I knew what would happen exactly… I just thought, we worked that hard, so it would probably go well. Haha.”
“The more I see you, the more you’re a bizarre guy.”
He thought it was just something Geonshin was saying so he wouldn’t spoil the mood, but he really had confidence. Team Leader Seungjin was just as dumbfounded.
“Hey. You thought a tie would come out? You said you were busy all morning, and you were really writing presentation material?”
“Wow. Geonshin, you really have a strong heart! I couldn’t even sleep all night, heh heh heh!”
‘I thought the odds of a tie were over half. And if that happened, it would go to a student vote, so I was preparing the scenario in advance.’
Geonshin knew a little about how competition-design judging worked.
Of course, he had never actually gone into a design evaluation, and he had never run a big project, but in his pre-regression life, at a drinking gathering where he went to win subcontract work, he once met an architect who had experience as a judge.
It was an old man in the same industry whose works were sometimes featured in magazines and who also wrote articles.
According to what he heard from him, when judging, the quality of a work shows its clear difference more when you see many together rather than when you face one piece one on one.
So more than the information in the work, he put a lot of weight on the image that enters your eyes at first glance.
And when the intensity he felt there matched the meaning contained inside the building, he said he chose that building.
First impressions are a very important element not only in people, but in architecture too. It was the realm of pure instinct, where consciousness and intention could not intervene.
A kind of primacy effect.
The first impression you feel at a first meeting plays a decisive role in forming an overall fixed idea about that target.
Removing the building boldly from the aerial view. To the president, a non-architect, that could not possibly have looked good.
Even if it had not been a rigged game, there was no way the president would give his vote to this proposal. Never.
When ordinary people see a stinking urinal lying around in a gallery instead of a painting, they will shout, “Why is that here! Get rid of it!”
But an artist tired of art trapped only inside the canvas put the title “Fountain” on a urinal and displayed it, sublimating it into art.
If traditional art had remained simply at “representation,” Duchamp expanded the territory by “presenting,” through the urinal, that even everyday things could become art.
Geonshin’s aim was the same. In the competition-design judging, there were three architects participating who could find a kind of “presentation” even in an aerial view that had no building.
If the judges compared the panels at the same time, their eyes would surely go to Yeongjo Architecture’s aerial view, which presented a reversal, rather than Mirim Architecture’s aerial view, which only stayed at reproducing the existing kind of aerial view.
Because they too had the instincts of creators and designers. And if they also checked the design report, confirming Division 7’s concept and the intention they wanted to embed in the building, and even the buildable conditions Team Leader Seungjin had realized, they would give their vote without hesitation.
This building was the real thing, a genuine article that leapt beyond the era.
If the judges had to share responsibility for any poor construction after Yeongjo’s plan was built, they would have been quite reluctant to choose this side.
But with no such responsibility, and if they could select, with their own hands, an ingenious proposal that might become an issue even later, and make it realizable… even if it was a rigged game, might they not be able to throw their cards down boldly?
In the end, Geonshin’s strategy worked perfectly.
Director Yoo-uk received a text message.
It was a message from Professor Bong.
After checking the contents, Director Yoo-uk gave a small snort of a laugh.
[I chose what I thought was good.]
Director Park Seonggi, his expression twisted, went to the president’s office. When he heard the news that Division 7 had, unbelievably, even made it to a student vote, he became anxious.
But President Kang Inseong sat in his chair, making donut shapes with cigarette smoke and humming.
“So, Director Park. Any problem?”
“Ah, no.”
“Isn’t it good if the company brings in projects?”
“Well, yes, but… the picture is kind of…”
“The picture?”
Director Park Seonggi knew well that Division 7’s winning was now out of his hands. Even if he interfered now, what use would it be?
Still, it irritated him that Division 7 had managed to create even a tie in a competition-design against Mirim Architecture, where everyone had judged it impossible.
And whenever he heard people whispering behind his back, it stressed him out to no end.
Even if Division 1 had gone in directly, they wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.
Could it be that the direct-report division is changing?
Damn it.
Park Seonggi’s face hardened stiffly.
“The Gwangseong University competition is a project the CEO said we should drop… If it actually wins, people might start doubting the CEO’s choice, and I’m worried that stray sparks might hit Headquarters 1 for no reason.”
“Don’t worry about stray sparks. People will doubt it, though.”
“Yes?”
“That’s exactly what I wanted. Heh heh.”
‘No. In front of CEO Lee Sangman, you acted like a tame cat, but since when…?’
At Yeongjo Architecture, CEO Lee Sangman’s power was an iron fortress.
His position as an architect was one thing, but his passion for probing the essence of architecture was extraordinary.
He wanted Yeongjo Architecture to have philosophy rather than money, and he tried as much as possible not to create situations where they had to build apartments or factories for money.
In a large architecture firm, architectural sacrifice for operation was inevitable.
With the poor artist mindset of “Even if there’s only one fan who listens to my music, I’ll release an album,” you could not be responsible for the salaries of countless employees.
CEO Lee Sangman displayed an outstanding ability to cross the subtle boundary between money and philosophy.
“Director Park, how do you think this architecture scene will change going forward?”
“Yes? The architecture scene?”
President Kang Inseong ground out his cigarette and sat up straighter.
“This society is like a human body. Once it gets seriously sick and gets through it, it builds resistance. And its constitution changes too. It was August 2001, right? We only just finished paying back the money borrowed from the IMF not that long ago. But these days my wife is going crazy, looking up cram schools until dawn, trying to make our kids, who are only high schoolers, study more.”
“Until dawn? Are there cram schools like that?”
“She wasn’t someone who cared about that kind of thing, but she saw it clearly. During the IMF, half-baked small and mid-sized companies got swept away. And when you come to your senses, the few big conglomerates that survived made even more money. What my wife says is, moms these days are already going crazy saying their kids absolutely have to go to a big conglomerate. If you send them to some company that only looks promising and another foreign exchange crisis comes, everyone dies. Heh heh.”
But Director Park Seonggi still couldn’t understand his words. Whether he questioned it or not, Kang Inseong continued.
“Society gets sick once, and its constitution changes, its constitution. But do you think architecture will stay the same?”
“Architecture? We got through the IMF well because of the CEO, didn’t we?”
“We didn’t get through it well. We started riding the wrong track. This architecture world’s constitution is going to change completely. To the point you can’t not make moves in advance. But will our artsy CEO accept that? Heh heh.”
In President Kang Inseong’s eyes, Director Park Seonggi read an ominous ambition.
In Seoul, the land readjustment projects that had continued until the 1970s were replaced by housing site development projects starting in the 1980s.
After that, huge city-scale projects poured out in earnest, then slowed during the IMF. But that was no different from sealing a bottle cap over soda that had been violently shaken.
As the 2000s began, Seoul rapidly laid the groundwork to become a megacity.
Architecture, as if it had been waiting, grew bigger, taller, and became wildly mixed.
That flow, through the introduction of turnkey methods and construction management (CM) in public projects, became a stimulant that increased the scale of construction projects.
And what emerged then was brand-name apartments.
With the war of brand-name apartments in the 2000s, the market expanded even further, and by 2007, they would occupy about 30% of the total floor area of private buildings in Seoul.
An unavoidable social flow and an already-decided future where construction companies’ power grows immense.
Yeongjo Architecture would face that wave.
President Kang Inseong, a wildcat that hid its claws for a long time and acted like a cat. He had been predicting the flow of the architecture world and watching for a chance to rebel.
And the beginning of that rebellion was Division 7.
‘This… I might end up getting help from that slop-bucket division in a way I never expected. Heh heh.’
Division 7 immediately went into presentation preparation.
Would anyone die just because they couldn’t go home for two days?
Director Yoo-uk handed over the materials delivered from the Management Support Headquarters, and Division 7 began preparing yet another strategy.
“All right. In two days, you’ll give a ten-minute presentation in front of a total of 100 people, including class representatives by year and major, and the student council. You have to prepare the material to project on the beam projector. Team Leader Mo presents, of course. And who will be next to him, flipping the PPT, Soomin, will you do it?”
“Huh? Me? Since Geonshin will write the scenario, wouldn’t Geonshin know the timing well?”
“I also think it’d be better for Geonshin to do it.”
“Then I’ll flip each slide, one by one, at just the perfect timing.”
“Oh? The other day at the design pool it feels like you’d only just grabbed a mouse for the first time, and now you’ve grown up, huh. I’ll let it slide today. Hahahahaha!”
Director Yoo-uk laughed loudly all day, like he was in a good mood. Like he was saying it on purpose for someone to hear. Division 1 was on the other side of the hallway.
But why was it?
When he actually looked at Geonshin’s scenario, Team Leader Seungjin’s expression was puzzling. He kept scratching his head, flipping the printout back and forth and turning it around.
Assistant Manager Soomin asked him,
“What is it, Team Leader?”
Then Team Leader Seungjin, with a confused face, asked,
“No, you really want me to present it like this?”
Was there a problem with the scenario?
At Team Leader Seungjin’s words, all the team members looked at Geonshin.
With eyes that said, what is this unmanageable newbie going to show us again.
This was a famous art-world scandal from 1917 involving Marcel Duchamp and a piece called Fountain.
Back then, Duchamp and some friends submitted a regular porcelain urinal (bought from a plumbing supply store) to a New York art show that was supposed to accept any work. He titled it Fountain and signed it “R. Mutt.” Even so, the organizers rejected it, which set off a huge argument about a big question: What counts as art?
Duchamp deliberately stirred up that controversy and helped launch new, radical ideas that shaped modern and avant-garde art.
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