You may remember the untimely ‘death’ of Uncle Farkus during a prison brawl. A death that was later realized as a mere misdiagnosis after he awoke ‘six feet under’ in his coffin. It was a mistake that anybody could make, tbh. Despite attempts at rescue by nearby buried Confederate Soldiers and trying to reenact Kill Bill Vol. 2 to no avail, he was ultimately rescued by a grave robber looking to make a few bucks from pawning authentic Confederate flags, swords, and belts buckles. After leaving the cemetery and taking a Greyhound back to Farkville, Farkus found himself bored with life and ultimately somewhat depressed. His Twitter account had hardly even been used. That all changed thanks to some ‘big news’.

After a time, work resumed as usual at the small architecture firm that Farkus had been interning since completing graduate school some eighteen years before. Most of 2011 had been dedicated to a highly esteemed aquarium project for Farkville. Per usual, Farkus wanted to do something different than the typical aquarium as seen in typical households in bowl-form or expensive modular Ripley’s Aquariums throughout touristy ‘armpit towns’.

After weeks of researching aquariums to really get a feel for what an aquarium actually is, Farkus finally realized what makes aquariums across the board appear ‘banal’ and ‘done one too many times’ was not the fish, glass, or moving walkways (though they certainly didn’t help); but it was actually the water (h20) involved. Thus Farkus came up with a design for an aquarium that held no water.

It was an amazing feat for sure–something that previous generations of architects had only dreamed about during trips involving bath salts and bad chillwave albums. Nevertheless, Farkus became the first interning architect to design an aquarium without water. Naturally, the clients didn’t go for the idea at first. They had their doubts regarding ‘how the fish will swim’ and ‘how an aquarium without water can even exist,’ but after a little bit of ‘Donald Drapering’, the clients were ‘sold’ and ecstatic about the prospect of having the world’s first ‘waterless aquarium’.

A project as groundbreaking and original as a ‘waterless aquarium’ is bound to gain press from architecture blogs and magazines everywhere; and, not surprisingly, every architect with a giant ego (which is 98% of the ‘good’ ones) is going to insert his or her opinion on whether it is actually good design or not. Of course, most of the world’s most-renown architects were quick to bash simply because they didn’t get to it first. Arch Record even quoted Frank Gehry, saying:

A waterless building huh? What the hell? Did he spill his juice, look at the empty glass, and say ‘oh my this is it’! Crap poop shit. Designers today just don’t know how to properly conceptualize. Back in my day, people had actual ‘reason’ for a design–such as a crumpled piece of stationary, for example.

Despite the negativity that usually dwells in every architects soul, some were able to look at the project with an open mind and praise the project for the great accomplishment in modern aquarium design that it was. It was reported by many via Twitter that even the Ghost of Van der Rohe had some positive remarks such as:

‘Jinkies. And here I thought removing ornament from skyscrapers was a great idea; removing water from an aquarium? Genius. Simply genius.’

The Ghost of Van der Rohe was not the only starchitect to praise Farkus for the project. In fact, long-time friand of Farkus, Zaha Hadid, reportedly said she finally saw some potential in the Uncle and offered him an internship in her firm. Apparently, Uncle Farkus was eager to accept the position as a cad monkey in a prestigious firm when an even greater offer arrived via text message from a mysterious ‘Kate’. The text message read:

‘come work 4 us plz’

Farkus, being a curious individual by training, responded. After several text messages back and forth between Farkus and the mysterious ‘Kate’, Farkus had textually agreed to a tenured position as a studio professor at Clemson University teaching architecture and innovative ‘Farkus-original’ design techniques to second year students. In addition to the studio job, he would also be teaching a course on using the computer for modeling, rendering, and the like.

Farkus was/is on Cloud 9. The title of professor is something he has always longed for since completing undergraduate school at Farkville Tech in ’93; but be certain that even though his title is now ‘professor’, he will most definitely be known as ‘uncle’ to his new students.

Congratulations on your new job, Uncle.