Much like a painting, the fraternity of architecture unveils itself with the breakthrough until its completion, a step for every process where we lay our mark onto yet until the last instant we are not able to beam for the total ramification of the prior yields that we sow. The onward journey for the fellow architects has been quirky and distinguished for every individual. The experiences we build on your way to the final momentum are gritty and hysterical, as students, we grab every opening and make a run for it. The experiences that revolve around us in the due course of the process are remarkable and rib-tickling. The denouement of a time period embraces the memories one had lived through, architecture has been a roller coaster for this in previous years.
The studio culture that was embedded within us has brought a change in our work pattern till today, we feel the longer durations of the working has made us patient and hungry in an interval of every forty minutes, nibbling on the rear end of the class has made us survive through the entire time. There were times when the whiff was out as soon as the lid was taken up and had to hide the food pretending we’re all on the drawing board working. It was sooner or later the heads would turn down for a nap, you would say to yourself ‘it’ll be a quick 5-minute nap’ until awakened by the professor and being a mockery for the class. I’d remember losing most of my stationery in the studio, nothing could’ve hurt me more. I never thought I’d be teary over a loss of a pencil, now the time had come to save and buy more stationery until we all came to a point of “finders keepers” that’s the best of deals to stumble on. With the group projects on, we had to choose the ‘A-team’ within the class to shoulder the work, but it never started that way.
Every individual had different ideas for design and looking for ground zero seemed like another task for us, the arguments and square points on who’ll do it better turned the basic task into a competition and in no time we were hit by the wave of sleep, surviving the nights on coffee and never saw it coming to this, yet with a little procrastination, we were all sound sleeping. The nights had turned into days and studios had become more of a place of comfort, being submerged in the drawings all day majorly on a typical section and its details had brought us closer to the project we had drawn on paper.
Even now, we were not convinced of the quantity to present sooner or later we were about to present our work to the jury. Here comes the major part the anxiety and stress were surpassing the levels on a different scale, our senses were heightened and every move was a ‘ripple effect’ on the mind. Being confronted with our own design had made us build some self-confidence, only to be nuked by their opening question followed by the aftermath. To answer these questions some knew how to tackle, but the majority lacked their views on design and features, I remember seeing the students coming out the presentation room with fear in their minds and teary eyes that soaked the entire floor in a panic situation. Nevertheless, we had got along with it. Moreover, the situation felt very subtle in the final years of architecture.
The perception around us had changed when we started observing the buildings in the vicinity than the ordinary humane activities, the buildings were talking more to us as the style and form it had followed it, it never cycled through us that a person without any knowledge of architecture seemed startled by a conversation we habitually carry with us, it was about appreciating the spaces when we moved through them yet a conventional person had a pale face to the surroundings, it wouldn’t weigh them much.
Visiting the old towns and traveling to the cities with multi-tier of fly-overs had brought a change in our impression of how architecture can influence society by designing minimal spaces for a large context. The traveling after architecture was more of site-study than a vacation, we would find ourselves looking for intricate details in the building we would visit or looking for vistas that made the building look more elegant in a particular time of the day, it had become our custom routine to get more pictures of building the portraits we would usually click, the phone gallery had turned into a collection of building pictures than the profile pictures we would usually want.
The architecture was always around us, altogether we needed a viewpoint to understand and feel the essence it imparted. From being a freshman to a professional we have believed to see it entirely.
It’s all around us, the talk of the town . . . . For we have made the town.
