Office castles

There have been calls for cubicle crenellations and modern moats, so this may be a derivative idea. But.

I'm just back from Brittany, where anyone who was anyone (and many people who weren't) built themselves a fortified chateau.

They don't build them like that, but why not? Every major company in every major city tries to build itself a taller, shinier or just odder skyscraper. The objective is not to accommodate their staff as efficiently as possible, but to make a grand statement that speaks of their affluence. However, the end result is always just a slightly taller or curvier glass and steel structure which, at the end of the day, look like it was put together from large Ikea components. Within three years, tbe neighbours will build something slightly taller or curvier, and the effect is lost.

Castles are grossly inefficient and uneconomic. Their immensely thick granite walls are nightmarishly expensive to produce, and the use of floor space is abysmal. Gargoyles, pinnacles, stone- mullioned windows and intricately carved furbelines can only be created by vast teams of ludicrously expensive craftsmen at great expense.

What better way, therefore, to advertise your corporate wealth? Instead of a giant oblate-spheroid greenhouse with elevators on the outside, build a city- block-sized castle with a courtyard, six- foot-thick granite walls and all the trimmings! Imagine the psychological impact on your competitors, and on potential customers, when a fanfare from the tabbard-wearing security guards announces the lowering of the drawbridge for the going-home procession at the end of the working day!