Architecture is an intensive industry and that nature of it could be felt even at the early days of a person’s journey in architecture; during their undergraduate days of architecture education. There are good days and bad days. There are times when we’ve been making good progress and just totally get halted due to idea blocks the next day. If we’ve ever stepped into the world of architecture, we must have at least experienced those ups and downs at least once during our studies.
Despite all those hours spent just focusing and trying to squeeze every bit of a good idea out for our projects, there are also funny moments in architecture that will just happen even when we don’t expect it to. Usually, these humorous moments happen when we’re weeks into a project and we’ve dived deep into architecture.
Have you ever got called out by your friends for looking too serious every time you’re sitting in front of your laptop even when the only thing you’re doing is watching YouTube or binge-watching Netflix? Or have you ever entered the studio and see all of your friends have their laptops on and their faces are just too serious, but then when you walk around you realised that some of them aren’t even doing work but instead are just watching cat videos?
Sometimes we’re too used to getting glued to our screens or gadgets especially when preparing for a crit or review that after time we just have this default, emotionless, empty face every time we turn on our laptops or PCs. We’re not doing CAD or making SketchUp models. We’re just taking a break from architecture and perhaps just want to enjoy an evening with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream with the daily dose of our favourite series. But the face we automatically put on is just hilarious for someone else to see because we immediately just look serious in front of your computers.
Another humorous experience is when we busted some moves in the studio with our headphones on and suddenly remembered that there are other people in the space as well. We’ve been working long and on the studio day, the tutors say that they’ll be doing one-on-one consultations. So, while waiting for our turn, we put our headphones on and continue to work with the best beats in the background. After some time we’re getting tired and we decided to move a bit following the rhythm of the song that’s playing and maybe sing a few verses to help us stay focused and alive.
Little do we know that we’re catching the attention of some of our peers (and maybe the tutors too!). When we finally landed back on earth it was too late and everyone had seen all the moves we got. It’s funny but hey, we’ve made the atmosphere in the studio a bit lighter and maybe increase some popularity points. It doesn’t come often but short, hilarious moments like that are the true MVP that helps us get through architecture.
Also, have you ever immerse too deep into your projects that you automatically answer almost any kind of questions with “Yes”, “No” or “Errrr… what?” when you mightn’t even hear the question correctly. It’s perfectly normal to be in that state because we are intensely focusing on our project but to the person asking it, it could look very funny because every time they ask us something we’ll just immediately answer it with a random “Yes!”
“Hey, what should we get for dinner tonight?”
“Yes!”
“So are we watching Star Wars or the new Marvel movies this weekend?”
“Yup!”
The examples are endless but it’s almost relatable to anyone in the industry especially when there’s a deadline just around the corner. We are just too dedicated to architecture that our brains just automatically simplify almost everything we hear and assume the most appropriate and quick response is a yes or a no. We as humans have a communication skill that is way superior in comparison to even the best computers or AI today but architecture could still find its way to temporarily reduce our speaking skill and make it worse than machines.
In summary, there are many silly side effects of taking the architecture pill and it may very well vary according to a person’s actual attitude. The situations above might be some of the very common ones that are highly likely to happen in one’s journey in architecture. We could be on any end of the situations be it that we are subject of the said funny situations or we’ve seen our friends or colleagues showing the silly side effects. As said above, these situations may come rarely but despite the short presence of these humorous moments they are among the small things that help us thrive to succeed in architecture or at least live to fight another day.
