It all starts with the first day of college/university. You walk around the campus with a heavy file having all your documents in one hand, trying to figure out where exactly to go in a crowd of anonymous faces. Upon finally realizing it, the heart starts to beat a little faster with every step you take up the stairs. A thousand thoughts cross the mind and there is a constant dialogue you have with yourself which usually ends in you trying to calm yourself. As if all this pressure was not enough for a situation like this, it is when you are walking around the floor looking for your class, that you hear someone shout, “Where is the north sign? No north means no submission!” And there. Right there. The heart stops for a fraction of a second and you wonder, “Why the hell is this north so important anyway?”
Leaving this mystery to be solved for later, you then go sit in a class with your potential classmates and the eyes start to scan everybody one-by-one. There is a girl with glasses who looks like a nerd, a guy who is dressed smart but cannot stop fixing his hair in the front camera of his phone, a group which already seem like best friends by the sound of their laughter and well then there are a bunch of people just sitting either aimlessly or too hesitant to interact with anyone yet. Slowly you get to know a few people, but then the Dean walked into the class and asked a very simple question. So simple, that almost the whole class gives similar 3-4 answers. The question being, “What made you choose architecture and why?” The common replies came out as, “Because I love sketching” or “Because my father is an architect” or “Because I love looking at different buildings” and so on, but it was later that we realize the complexity behind that question and how it made us question our existence in that class.
A few weeks later, we realize what we have got ourselves into. It is no myth when we hear architects talk about their bachelors’ days and tell stories about how they had so many sleepless nights, how they got wounded multiple times the first time they learned to properly use the cutter, or how their impeccably sharpened HB pencils were broken in front of their eyes because there is no room for both, HB pencils and sharpeners in an Architectural Studio. But this was just the beginning and the actual nightmares came in later. The first one being, when you worked the whole weekend, all day and night, on a ‘Lettering’ sheet, just to get a ‘Redo’ the next day! Could it get any worse? Well, definitely yes. It was the case of the missing north that stopped you on the first day and was still unresolved because the first semester was almost coming to an end, and you still have not made any actual architectural drawings, which you thought was the only thing to learn in these 5 years.
Semester after semester passed by and you became more caffeine dependent, there are dark circles under those sleepy eyes, you even endeavor to find the right concept for your design, but it is a routine that you are used to now. Things changed and so have you as a person who has started to look at everything differently now. But there is something that remained the same. The professor shouted every time after submission, “You forgot the north sign again!”. It was surely very frustrating at the start but with every new topic you studied and with every semester passing, there is hidden importance of this ‘north sign’ that you learn. Without it, the whole design can mean something else and the idea perceived changes completely as well. It becomes a little funnier though when the boss at your first internship shares a similar story with you and you whisper to yourself, “Thank god I was not the only one!” And now, the situation has reversed. You might struggle with your concept or design, but a north sign is the first thing you put on the sheet.
Architecture is much more than just making plans, sections, and elevations of a building. Every single line drawn on the sheet can have multiple interpretations. The journey of 5 years which seemed like a torment in the beginning and almost made you quit architecture, has now given a new meaning to your life. Because as mentioned, it is not as much about designing a building as it is about designing spaces for people to live in and call it home; or for people to work in a peaceful and creative environment or for designing safe spaces for the small kids to play and enjoy. Architecture is a never-ending learning process, and with completing this small journey, it is just the start of something so much more. In the end, all those sleepless nights, all those cups of coffee you had to stay awake, all the times you got frustrated whenever the software crashed the night before the submission, the times the professor tore your sheets into bits and pieces in front of the whole class, the times you hurt yourself while making those models, or those early morning trips you made to the printing shop on the day of the final submission, but it all makes sense and seems worth it because it is not just your routine now but something you love to do, day and night.
