OligArchitect

Death by Design

Many of the mysterious deaths of Russian oligarchs can be linked directly to their involvement with the Kremlin, but one of the fall-outs has been the commissions for architects and yacht designers who served these oligarchs.  The designers are facing a reduction in design commissions due to sanctions and a diminishing client base. One anonymous architect commented that Albert Speer never has these problems with Adolf Hitler until near the end.

Worrisome for architects, besides their clients, some of their fellow designers are disappearing as well.  Vitaly Potemkin RAIA, the favored architect of a number of oligarchs, has mysteriously disappeared.  Known for his James Bond-like villain lairs and summer homes, he was favored for his rigid fascist classicism mixed with ultra-modern bunker designs, typically supplemented with shark pens, high voltage protective measures, poison-coated stakes and other usual supervillain lair design features.  His professional office staff was rounded out by high voltage electrical engineers, tank waterproofing specialists, hidden door hardware engineers and hazardous material chemists.  Vitaly’s special skill was in navigating the building codes for these special features and handling the inspectors sent out to the building construction sites.  While there have been rumors of nosy construction workers and building inspectors disappearing, similar to the Egyptian slaves building the pyramids, Potemkin’s office has maintained that the workers and inspectors have just been reassigned to other sites or projects.  His office has a sister company that specializes in yacht design with equal specialists in helicopter landing platforms, submarine docking ports and emergency escape pods.