Comment On Yesterday's Function, Today's Form

That's the problem with "Purpose Built" facilities...eventually the purpose goes away, and you're stuck with something that far less useful than just a generic space.

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TRWTF is that they "hired" (interns usually work for little to no money) a couple of interns and did nothing of use with said interns. It's free labor people!

So, where exactly is the WTF here? A room built 30 years ago is no longer suitable for its task because technology has moved on? So what? Right now there are architects all over the world designing rooms for computer equipment that is obviously going to be obsolete in 30 years time. Unless precognition is a requirement I don't really see it can be any other way.

As for the "solitary confinement" I would absolutely love it!!! The chance to have an area all to myself, bar some random kid who never speaks, sounds absolutely divine.

MechanicJay:

That's the problem with "Purpose Built" facilities...eventually the purpose goes away, and you're stuck with something that far less useful than just a generic space.

It's even better when you've been doing it for 300 years; PERME Waltham Abbey started off as a fulling mill, was then adapted for making vegetable oil and then in 1660s it was converted to manufacture gunpowder for use in the Second Dutch War.

It ended up - until its closure in the 1990s - being used for propellant research, the structures originally designed for nitroglycerine production were adapted for use in rocket testing.

But then, that's the point. Things can generally be re-purposed; you have a site that was originally for making cloth for an Abbey in the C12th ending up being used for military research.

nobody:

TRWTF is that they "hired" (interns usually work for little to no money) a couple of interns and did nothing of use with said interns. It's free labor people!

Not always, at least for IT. In college, I was on 3 co-ops/internships. All three paid close to what entry-level for that position would be.
In retrospect, I wish I would have saved more of that money in CDs or something, I could pay off a good bit of my loans.

nobody:

TRWTF is that they "hired" (interns usually work for little to no money) a couple of interns and did nothing of use with said interns. It's free labor people!

Free is not valued.

The VAX part reminds me of replacing a VAX mainframe in a factory in the UK with a 486 PC.

Amusingly, some purpose-built facilities/standards remain... the 19 inch server rack is directly descended from the 19 inch wide relay racks originally used in the late 1800s for railroad track signaling systems. Most of that equipment would probably still mount in modern racks without issue. They definitely outlasted the punchcard, another late-1800s IT invention.

Anonymous:

So, where exactly is the WTF here? A room built 30 years ago is no longer suitable for its task because technology has moved on? So what? Right now there are architects all over the world designing rooms for computer equipment that is obviously going to be obsolete in 30 years time. Unless precognition is a requirement I don't really see it can be any other way.

As for the "solitary confinement" I would absolutely love it!!! The chance to have an area all to myself, bar some random kid who never speaks, sounds absolutely divine.

A room built 30 years ago for a purpose so specific that it can't do anything else is totally a WTF - designing a room like in the WTF above certainly qualifies. The real WTF, however, is the attitude - a room is a room, so if the purpose goes away, you should be able to adapt, but they didn't here.

kastein:

Amusingly, some purpose-built facilities/standards remain... the 19 inch server rack is directly descended from the 19 inch wide relay racks originally used in the late 1800s for railroad track signaling systems. Most of that equipment would probably still mount in modern racks without issue. They definitely outlasted the punchcard, another late-1800s IT invention.

Well, a 19" rack is fairly generic, which helps: all it does is hold stuff that's 19" wide and a standard height.

Maybe its a European vs American thing. When I drive by Picatinny Arsenal, I see tons of abandoned buildings and facilities left to rot and decay because the project they were built for is now over....Though the "Railgun Testing Facility" does look kinda cool from the road.

hikari:

MechanicJay:

That's the problem with "Purpose Built" facilities...eventually the purpose goes away, and you're stuck with something that far less useful than just a generic space.

It's even better when you've been doing it for 300 years; PERME Waltham Abbey started off as a fulling mill, was then adapted for making vegetable oil and then in 1660s it was converted to manufacture gunpowder for use in the Second Dutch War.

It ended up - until its closure in the 1990s - being used for propellant research, the structures originally designed for nitroglycerine production were adapted for use in rocket testing.

But then, that's the point. Things can generally be re-purposed; you have a site that was originally for making cloth for an Abbey in the C12th ending up being used for military research.

Sorry, TRWTF is still this commenting system -- re-post to keep the conversation thread intact...

Maybe its a European vs American thing. When I drive by Picatinny Arsenal, I see tons of abandoned buildings and facilities left to rot and decay because the project they were built for is now over....Though the "Railgun Testing Facility" does look kinda cool from the road.

Franz Kafka:

Anonymous:

So, where exactly is the WTF here? A room built 30 years ago is no longer suitable for its task because technology has moved on? So what? Right now there are architects all over the world designing rooms for computer equipment that is obviously going to be obsolete in 30 years time. Unless precognition is a requirement I don't really see it can be any other way.

As for the "solitary confinement" I would absolutely love it!!! The chance to have an area all to myself, bar some random kid who never speaks, sounds absolutely divine.

A room built 30 years ago for a purpose so specific that it can't do anything else is totally a WTF - designing a room like in the WTF above certainly qualifies. The real WTF, however, is the attitude - a room is a room, so if the purpose goes away, you should be able to adapt, but they didn't here.

Yes, I see your point, but in this case it was just a room full of shelves. It clearly is not so specific that you couldn't do anything else with it. Plenty of rooms have shelves in them, that doesn't mean that those rooms can never be used for any other purpose other than holding things that go on shelves!!

Anonymous:

Yes, I see your point, but in this case it was just a room full of shelves. It clearly is not so specific that you couldn't do anything else with it. Plenty of rooms have shelves in them, that doesn't mean that those rooms can never be used for any other purpose other than holding things that go on shelves!!

Yes, but in this case the shelves were apparently just tall enough to accomodate punch cards, which makes them pretty useless for much of anything else.

As they did, in fact, evidently use the room for something else -- office space for two interns -- the shelves must not have filled the room. But they wasted a bunch of space.

That's why I don't like built-in furniture, wiring or plumbing that cannot be reached without tearing out walls, etc. I know that someday I'll want to turn that bedroom into an extra bathroom, or new technology will require that I install new cabling for the TV, or maybe I just want to add a new light switch. I'd like if it I don't have to burn the house down and start over to do that.

Which, by the way, is why I do so much better at writing software than at carpentry. When you cut a board wrong, you have to throw it away and get another, maybe dismantling a bunch of existing structure. When you write a line of code wrong, you just hit a few backspaces and re-type.

kastein:

Amusingly, some purpose-built facilities/standards remain... the 19 inch server rack is directly descended from the 19 inch wide relay racks originally used in the late 1800s for railroad track signaling systems. Most of that equipment would probably still mount in modern racks without issue. They definitely outlasted the punchcard, another late-1800s IT invention.

which brings to mind how the romans influenced the space shuttle design. Apocryphal or not? .. but it is a fun read :D

The real WTF is that the article does not show the source code:

#define ' _

function string Yesterday's()
{

}

private void Today's_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

}

This is a programming forum, you should let us see the codes! How can we comment on the WTFs? Is it because of the illegal characters? I fixed that already.

Anonymous:

Franz Kafka:

Anonymous:

So, where exactly is the WTF here? A room built 30 years ago is no longer suitable for its task because technology has moved on? So what? Right now there are architects all over the world designing rooms for computer equipment that is obviously going to be obsolete in 30 years time. Unless precognition is a requirement I don't really see it can be any other way.

As for the "solitary confinement" I would absolutely love it!!! The chance to have an area all to myself, bar some random kid who never speaks, sounds absolutely divine.

A room built 30 years ago for a purpose so specific that it can't do anything else is totally a WTF - designing a room like in the WTF above certainly qualifies. The real WTF, however, is the attitude - a room is a room, so if the purpose goes away, you should be able to adapt, but they didn't here.

Yes, I see your point, but in this case it was just a room full of shelves. It clearly is not so specific that you couldn't do anything else with it. Plenty of rooms have shelves in them, that doesn't mean that those rooms can never be used for any other purpose other than holding things that go on shelves!!

... I can just see the followup WTF story...:

Jake Vinson:

Chris surveyed the dimely lit room he had spent the last eon of his life in. The walls, with their tiny shelves, were completley covered with tally marks.

Today, however, was different. Chris had a purpose, a plan, a reason for existence beside his customary Monster energy drink in the morning. Today, Dietrich had assigned him a new task. He swung the pick-axe over and over and spent the rest of the day removing the shelves to make way for a brand new restroom. Mike finally finished removing the shelf and its accompanying desk and left feeling rather accomplished.

Commenter 1 (unregistered):
OMG FRIST!!!1
captcha: imaloser

Grammar Nazi 1:
dimely? completley? lern2spell!

Grammar Nazi 2:
you improperly used gerunds and your punctuation is abysmal. I'm never coming back!

Poster 4:
FIST!!!1 were the shelves wooden? did anyone take pictures of things on them?

Poster 5:
who is Mike? Is he Chris or did someone fail at anonymizing? I bet someone made this entire story up. Jake sucks and I'm never coming back!

<fin>

Check out the San Fransisco Armory. A fortified castle, designed for the army reserves, with lots of room for things like horses and precision drilling. Abandoned because marching in formation is useless for modern combat and what they now needed was parking space for mechanized infantry vehicles.

But all is well, because after 30 years of abandonment, it got bought by a major player in the pr0n industry, and it's dungeon-like atmosphere makes great sets for fetish shoots.

Latex glove dispensers and punch cards.

Aren't those objects decades apart?

even mythbusters use abandoned buildings/roads/etc for their experiments. If the shelves are too small to hold anything, use a hammer and replace them with something useful.

kastein:

Commenter 1 (unregistered):
OMG FRIST!!!1
captcha: imaloser

Grammar Nazi 1:
dimely? completley? lern2spell!

Grammar Nazi 2:
you improperly used gerunds and your punctuation is abysmal. I'm never coming back!

Poster 4:
FIST!!!1 were the shelves wooden? did anyone take pictures of things on them?

Poster 5:
who is Mike? Is he Chris or did someone fail at anonymizing? I bet someone made this entire story up. Jake sucks and I'm never coming back!

<fin>

I really shouldn't be reading comments like this while drinking soda...You nearly ruined my keyboard!

MechanicJay:

Maybe its a European vs American thing. When I drive by Picatinny Arsenal, I see tons of abandoned buildings and facilities left to rot and decay because the project they were built for is now over....Though the "Railgun Testing Facility" does look kinda cool from the road.

That's kind of ironic, seeing as how we in the US have piles and piles of land compared to england.

Anonymous:

Franz Kafka:

Anonymous:

So, where exactly is the WTF here? A room built 30 years ago is no longer suitable for its task because technology has moved on? So what? Right now there are architects all over the world designing rooms for computer equipment that is obviously going to be obsolete in 30 years time. Unless precognition is a requirement I don't really see it can be any other way.

As for the "solitary confinement" I would absolutely love it!!! The chance to have an area all to myself, bar some random kid who never speaks, sounds absolutely divine.

A room built 30 years ago for a purpose so specific that it can't do anything else is totally a WTF - designing a room like in the WTF above certainly qualifies. The real WTF, however, is the attitude - a room is a room, so if the purpose goes away, you should be able to adapt, but they didn't here.

Yes, I see your point, but in this case it was just a room full of shelves. It clearly is not so specific that you couldn't do anything else with it. Plenty of rooms have shelves in them, that doesn't mean that those rooms can never be used for any other purpose other than holding things that go on shelves!!

Well, my TRWTF comment was that their attitude kept that room unused for decades.

jay:

Yes, but in this case the shelves were apparently just tall enough to accomodate punch cards, which makes them pretty useless for much of anything else.

Oh, I don't know. I bet you could store your collection of 8-track tapes on them.

jay:

That's why I don't like built-in furniture, wiring or plumbing that cannot be reached without tearing out walls, etc. I know that someday I'll want to turn that bedroom into an extra bathroom, or new technology will require that I install new cabling for the TV, or maybe I just want to add a new light switch. I'd like if it I don't have to burn the house down and start over to do that.

I can't imagine much you could do to a house to make it uglier than running plumbing and wiring on the room side of the walls. It's well worth it to me to have it hidden. If/when the time comes to remodel, the contractors will deal with removing and replacing the walls. I've lived in my house for eight years now with no need to remodel anything. I've envisioned redoing the master bath, but it's at least a couple of years away. Why stare at wires and pipes?

Code Dependent:

jay:

That's why I don't like built-in furniture, wiring or plumbing that cannot be reached without tearing out walls, etc. I know that someday I'll want to turn that bedroom into an extra bathroom, or new technology will require that I install new cabling for the TV, or maybe I just want to add a new light switch. I'd like if it I don't have to burn the house down and start over to do that.

I can't imagine much you could do to a house to make it uglier than running plumbing and wiring on the room side of the walls. It's well worth it to me to have it hidden. If/when the time comes to remodel, the contractors will deal with removing and replacing the walls. I've lived in my house for eight years now with no need to remodel anything. I've envisioned redoing the master bath, but it's at least a couple of years away. Why stare at wires and pipes?

I thought that a lot of houses in england have their pipes on the outside, painted purple.

Dim lighting.. deep shelves... latex glove dispenser...

Am I the only one who expected to find out that the room used to be a morgue?

Slightly OT but reminded me of an IT shop I did some work in years ago. The office supply closet was in a vault with a 1' thick steel door, very similar to a bank vault (purpose-built, so not OT I guess).

Apparently, this former bank was within the city limits of New Orleans, almost right to the border of Metairie (neighboring suburb), next to a railroad track. Bank robbers would wait until a train was crossing to rob the bank, because the call would go to the Orleans parish sheriff's office who would be conveniently blocked from a timely response by the train. They got hit too many times and closed up shop, leaving the highly secure office supply room. :-)

Franz Kafka:

I thought that a lot of houses in england have their pipes on the outside, painted purple.

I don't know; never been there. I guess if you live in a 300 year old house with solid stone walls, then you might run pipes on the outside for expediency, but you'd have to be ready to deal with having them freeze in winter.

Code Dependent:

Franz Kafka:

I thought that a lot of houses in england have their pipes on the outside, painted purple.

I don't know; never been there. I guess if you live in a 300 year old house with solid stone walls, then you might run pipes on the outside for expediency, but you'd have to be ready to deal with having them freeze in winter.

It's England - the Thames hasn't frozen over in 100 years or so.

Franz Kafka:

It's England - the Thames hasn't frozen over in 100 years or so.

Interesting. Your temperature must not fluctuate like ours. I'm in Texas, where it's currently 91 degrees F outside with an expected high of 97. In a matter of days we'll be up in the triple digits. And yet it freezes here in winter, at least a couple of times a year.

Still, Jay was on about plumbing and wiring inside the walls, unreachable. I hope he's not planning to run his wiring outside his house.

Franz Kafka:

MechanicJay:

Maybe its a European vs American thing. When I drive by Picatinny Arsenal, I see tons of abandoned buildings and facilities left to rot and decay because the project they were built for is now over....Though the "Railgun Testing Facility" does look kinda cool from the road.

That's kind of ironic, seeing as how we in the US have piles and piles of land compared to england.

Well, not really. It's entirely the way round I'd expect it. If you have lots of land, you're going to care less about re-using it. Having first double checked Picatinny Arsenal was in the US (it's in NJ apparently).

It should be noted Waltham Abbey looks a lot like that now, it's been closed since the late 90s. Part of it is a museum and the other part of it is a SSI (some of the more interesting bits really, considering very few people are allowed back there and it's largely overgrown).

OzPeter:

kastein:

Amusingly, some purpose-built facilities/standards remain... the 19 inch server rack is directly descended from the 19 inch wide relay racks originally used in the late 1800s for railroad track signaling systems. Most of that equipment would probably still mount in modern racks without issue. They definitely outlasted the punchcard, another late-1800s IT invention.

which brings to mind how the romans influenced the space shuttle design. Apocryphal or not? .. but it is a fun read :D

It is indeed apocryphal. I won't get into the other errors in it, but the shuttle addendum states the design was because it had to pass through a tunnel (unidentified tunnel, by the way) that was only "slightly wider than the track". This is impossible as no tunnel is built "just slightly wider" than 4 feet 8 inches. Besides, the SRB's are *much* bigger than that anyway (just slightly more than 12 feet in diameter). Even if a tunnel was a problem on one route to KSC, there are a number of other overland routes they could have used that wouldn't have required using a tunnel.

Even if a tunnel proved unavoidable on a cross-continental trip, they could have gone straight south to the Gulf and dropped them on barges to be taken to Florida.

Code Dependent:

Franz Kafka:

It's England - the Thames hasn't frozen over in 100 years or so.

Interesting. Your temperature must not fluctuate like ours. I'm in Texas, where it's currently 91 degrees F outside with an expected high of 97. In a matter of days we'll be up in the triple digits. And yet it freezes here in winter, at least a couple of times a year.

Still, Jay was on about plumbing and wiring inside the walls, unreachable. I hope he's not planning to run his wiring outside his house.

I'm not sure that the Hudson has ever frozen either (not recently), but my pipes certainly have. I can't imagine that it's much different in the UK.

Code Dependent:

I hope he's not planning to run his wiring outside his house.

When I was in college, we lived in the dorms, each of which housed about 150 kids. There was a central phone-switch panel behind an unlocked utility door. One night, we got a little drunk , loosened all the connector screws and ran a length of bare wire looped around every screw, essentially making every phone in the dorm an extension of every other phone. Every time a phone would ring, everyone's line would ring, regardless of who was actually called.

The phone service guy thought it was inventive, but laughed and wouldn't tell us why...

We thought it was funny, until we got our phone bills, and everyone was charged for every call that everyone made on any of the phones (the clerk at the local phone co was not amused when we had to sort that out).

BrooklynBruisa:

I'm not sure that the Hudson has ever frozen either

It hasn't in my memory (50+years), but after a (rare) week of 10 degree weather I've seen it nearly covered with 10-20 foot mini-icebergs, to the point that the Staten Island Ferry (350 foot boat, 3 levels, 6000 people) would slow to about 1mph while pushing the bergs out of the way.

Duke of New York:

Dim lighting.. deep shelves... latex glove dispenser...

Am I the only one who expected to find out that the room used to be a morgue?

I thought maybe the latex gloves were a buildup to a cavity search for the new hirees.

webhamster:

OzPeter:

kastein:

Amusingly, some purpose-built facilities/standards remain... the 19 inch server rack is directly descended from the 19 inch wide relay racks originally used in the late 1800s for railroad track signaling systems. Most of that equipment would probably still mount in modern racks without issue. They definitely outlasted the punchcard, another late-1800s IT invention.

which brings to mind how the romans influenced the space shuttle design. Apocryphal or not? .. but it is a fun read :D

It is indeed apocryphal. I won't get into the other errors in it, but the shuttle addendum states the design was because it had to pass through a tunnel (unidentified tunnel, by the way) that was only "slightly wider than the track". This is impossible as no tunnel is built "just slightly wider" than 4 feet 8 inches. Besides, the SRB's are *much* bigger than that anyway (just slightly more than 12 feet in diameter). Even if a tunnel was a problem on one route to KSC, there are a number of other overland routes they could have used that wouldn't have required using a tunnel.

Even if a tunnel proved unavoidable on a cross-continental trip, they could have gone straight south to the Gulf and dropped them on barges to be taken to Florida.

That, and track width wasn't determined by some random old rule of thumb. They needed to be wide enough to keep the center of gravity from making the train tip over on turns.

webhamster:

Even if a tunnel proved unavoidable on a cross-continental trip, they could have gone straight south to the Gulf and dropped them on barges to be taken to Florida.

Why even a barge? They're FREAKING ROCKETS! Just launch them over to the Cape!

BrooklynBruisa:

Code Dependent:

Franz Kafka:

It's England - the Thames hasn't frozen over in 100 years or so.

Interesting. Your temperature must not fluctuate like ours. I'm in Texas, where it's currently 91 degrees F outside with an expected high of 97. In a matter of days we'll be up in the triple digits. And yet it freezes here in winter, at least a couple of times a year.

Still, Jay was on about plumbing and wiring inside the walls, unreachable. I hope he's not planning to run his wiring outside his house.

I'm not sure that the Hudson has ever frozen either (not recently), but my pipes certainly have. I can't imagine that it's much different in the UK.

Maybe not in New York City; but near Albany it freezes over every winter. Icebreakers come.

Allrighty then I see my true calling in life, to design rooms that are built for future technologies! I can build something and not have to explain why it is the way it is and not have to explain myself because obviously they just do not see far enough ahead!

Allrighty then I see my true calling in life, to design rooms that are built for future technologies! I can build something and not have to explain why it is the way it is a because obviously they just do not see far enough ahead!

PJ Davis:

webhamster:

Even if a tunnel proved unavoidable on a cross-continental trip, they could have gone straight south to the Gulf and dropped them on barges to be taken to Florida.

Why even a barge? They're FREAKING ROCKETS! Just launch them over to the Cape!

They would, but they are one use only. Though I suppose they could be launched over and then refueled -- from a barge.

Franz Kafka:

A room built 30 years ago for a purpose so specific that it can't do anything else is totally a WTF - designing a room like in the WTF above certainly qualifies. The real WTF, however, is the attitude - a room is a room, so if the purpose goes away, you should be able to adapt, but they didn't here.

Why can't this room do anything else? Just rip the shelves out and use it as storage of some sort. I'm just confused how shelving took so long to put together that the project was scrapped before they finished the room.

The WTF might be that they'd never repurposed it other than sticking a couple of mostly unsupervised interns in it.

Anonymous:

So, where exactly is the WTF here? A room built 30 years ago is no longer suitable for its task because technology has moved on? So what? Right now there are architects all over the world designing rooms for computer equipment that is obviously going to be obsolete in 30 years time. Unless precognition is a requirement I don't really see it can be any other way.

It's not precognition that's left wanting here. It's the lack of imagination in how to put those purpose-built spaces to some current task; and hikari's follow-up comment illustrates how to do it right.

The perfect example of wrongness from the story is that "VAX" room. Instead of ripping up the floor and putting something like an employee gym or a cafeteria in there, they simply continued using it for its original purpose: i.e. housing the server that performs the tasks the VAX had been obtained for and that its replacement continued performing.

Completely boneheaded property and facilities management.

yeah right:

PJ Davis:

webhamster:

Even if a tunnel proved unavoidable on a cross-continental trip, they could have gone straight south to the Gulf and dropped them on barges to be taken to Florida.

Why even a barge? They're FREAKING ROCKETS! Just launch them over to the Cape!

They would, but they are one use only. Though I suppose they could be launched over and then refueled -- from a barge.

What's beautiful about your comment, Mr. Yeahright, is that the perfect response is: WHOOSH!

webhamster:

OzPeter:

kastein:

Amusingly, some purpose-built facilities/standards remain... the 19 inch server rack is directly descended from the 19 inch wide relay racks originally used in the late 1800s for railroad track signaling systems. Most of that equipment would probably still mount in modern racks without issue. They definitely outlasted the punchcard, another late-1800s IT invention.

which brings to mind how the romans influenced the space shuttle design. Apocryphal or not? .. but it is a fun read :D

It is indeed apocryphal. I won't get into the other errors in it, but the shuttle addendum states the design was because it had to pass through a tunnel (unidentified tunnel, by the way) that was only "slightly wider than the track". This is impossible as no tunnel is built "just slightly wider" than 4 feet 8 inches. Besides, the SRB's are *much* bigger than that anyway (just slightly more than 12 feet in diameter). Even if a tunnel was a problem on one route to KSC, there are a number of other overland routes they could have used that wouldn't have required using a tunnel.

Even if a tunnel proved unavoidable on a cross-continental trip, they could have gone straight south to the Gulf and dropped them on barges to be taken to Florida.

Where to start...

It's "12 foot". The plural is in the "12" bit.

"slightly wider than the track" doesn't mean "slightly wider than the gauge of the track"; it means "slightly wider than the total width plus clearance of the trains that pass along that route".

Choosing a route isn't a matter of saying "we'll take this one!" For cargo like that, you have many constraints, particularly with regard to locality of conurbations and the interests of lobbyists. So, as one of many alternative routes, it's highly likely the dimensions of the smallest tunnel across all those routes were factored into the design of the booster rockets.

In other words, don't attempt to debunk what you don't understand.

Code Dependent:

jay:

That's why I don't like built-in furniture, wiring or plumbing that cannot be reached without tearing out walls, etc. I know that someday I'll want to turn that bedroom into an extra bathroom, or new technology will require that I install new cabling for the TV, or maybe I just want to add a new light switch. I'd like if it I don't have to burn the house down and start over to do that.

I can't imagine much you could do to a house to make it uglier than running plumbing and wiring on the room side of the walls. It's well worth it to me to have it hidden. If/when the time comes to remodel, the contractors will deal with removing and replacing the walls. I've lived in my house for eight years now with no need to remodel anything. I've envisioned redoing the master bath, but it's at least a couple of years away. Why stare at wires and pipes?

In the real world, we have such things as conduits, trunking, and paneling.

However, in building contractor land, such things do not exist: pretend I never said anything.

When I design my own house, it will have recessed conduits for wiring and plumbing in the load-bearing walls. When something needs to be routed away from them, they'll be concealed in conduit proud of the wall. It's possible and highly desirable, because it means you don't need to be multiskilled in order to solve the task.

With regard to the GP: unlike in the US, a "house" in the UK is something that won't collapse in on itself when the big bad wolf comes huffing and puffing along.