Life in an architecture school is a unique journey. You finish off with high school and enter a new pedagogical system with a relatively more attractive environment. It exposes you to situations where you learn how to sustain yourself. The first place you’re attracted to here is the design studio. You’re all exhilarated to sit in this new non-conventional classroom for the first time with 40 other eager minds. You don’t realise how over the next five years the same place becomes your second home in the times you’re happy and even when the time comes to burn the midnight oil. You look forward to the interactive sessions and the diverse learning sources available, but at the same time, you dread the long hours that you have to spend here as you embark on the journey of an architecture student. Ranging from workshops, on-field design studio projects to doing market surveys and spending hours at the desk; rendering, modelling and sketching, you never run out of things to do or places to be. It makes you realise that the skill you needed the most was time management.
Over time, you gather that design is not a single subject but an amalgamation of all the other disciplines that you study. In due course, it accounts for how detailed and accurate your design can be. All the work that you do striving through taxing days and sleepless nights; eventually drives you to the design jury at the end of the semester.
No matter how much you have worked the entire semester, the subsequent redo’s, multiple failed attempts and those long initial few hurdles ultimately get you down to that one magical night which upholds your semester. This night is an unforgettable experience that each architect reminisces about whenever he thinks of his old days back at school. It is the one night before your design jury. The chaos, the sleep deprivation, the hunger, the pile of butter sheets and the scattered stationery; but most importantly you want to relive that feeling of accomplishment you get which is patiently waiting for you the next day.
At an early stage in each semester, every student aspires to manage time better than how his past self did in the previous one. But, history doesn’t stop repeating itself as it is the onset of yet another mundane cycle of a design semester. At first, spending days on understanding the crux of the design brief. Further, to dedicating weeks on background research and taking forever to come up with a concept. Revisions on uncountable butter sheets, with nothing working out, you have mastered the art of procrastination. The graph of progress made during the semester reflects that only magic can save you going further. The sleight of hand of that one night.
It’s 8 pm. You have your jury the next day. You meet everyone for dinner where they are discussing how much is left. You’re somewhat scared, somewhat relieved. That one person is talking about his rendered sheets with the others carefully listening to him while thinking, “How do I make it past the plan?”. You quickly gobble up your food and reach your room to start with the work on building elevations. In no time you’re done with them. You pat yourself on the back. Then your roommate asks you, ”You’re going to start facade treatment now, right?”. Your heart skips a beat as you look for the words, “I forgot”. You immediately foresee the criticism coming from the juror’s end.
It’s midnight. All you can do is introduce the messiah for an architecture student, the concept of sustainability. You start adding vines to the elevations and blowing up the details showing shade and shadow. The building sections and views are nowhere to be seen, telling you that it’s a long night ahead for you. With having no time to think about it, you move to put some views to render on the laptop while you work on the other drawing. You’re mastering the art of multi-tasking. The clutter you’re working in makes you lose your stationery and then time goes into looking for an ink pen for the line weights.
It’s 2 am. Even though you have toiled through the last few hours, looking at your roommate you realise how much is remaining. At this point, Mies Van Der Rohe is on your mind. You can only hear “Less is more!” echoing in your ears. It is your only source of confidence. You notice how the structure of the building is probably not worked out. Now, the domino effect of the night begins. Your tired eyes start seeing things go downhill.
It is the next few hours that make up for the most crucial time and would determine if you would make it or not. Your mind starts working better and the speed shoots up. As soon as the rendering finishes, the physical model is at its early stages. While getting wounded by the cutter and the glue, you manage to finish it up too. You’re all done. All this while you had no time for some late-night snacks.
It’s 9 am. You are exporting the files for print. The owner of the printing shop is who comes to your mind next. He doesn’t pick up. When you reach his shop, you see the longest queue you’ve seen. You’re worried that you still have the last finishes to give to the physical model and a refreshing bath to take after this frantic night. Finally, your turn comes. You have it all printed. You fix up a few things with ink quickly and mark the most important, ‘North’, that you had forgotten about. Since you’re running out of time, you quickly take a shower and head to the exam room with all sheets and glue, a cutter and some board that you’re yet to cut and stick.
You know the second you begin your jury, it is the end; an ending to the long semester. Hopefully a happy one!
