Frank Gehry once cited, “I don’t know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.”
We as architects have been designed to take approvals and affirmations, be it from our professors, bosses, clients, or our peers. In this process we lose our rationality to reason out our design concepts and agendas, falling in the swamp of confusion and uncertainty. It must have happened with everyone, whether at an academic level or the professional level, that there must have been a venture that you like, and want to squeeze the imagination for it, and you do, but it is often laid to rest under the burden of teachers, peers, structural impossibilities or the notorious Vastu Shastra. The result is the macabre of your dream project and a never-ending wait for another one.
My story, too, resonates with all of the above, where I fell prey to the opinion(s) of others. When I was in the third year of the architecture course, we had been given a project to design “Mid-Rise Apartments”. Being an enthusiast of design concepts, calculations, and grids in architecture, it gave me the much-needed drive. Upon the research, I came across the famous China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters, Beijing designed by Rem Koolhas (Image 1), where the void formed was the protagonist of the building.
It left me in wonder and being the naïve third-year student, I was quick to think that if this skyscraper of a building can indulge a void, so can my insignificant mid-rise apartment. The major struggle, which an over-enthusiastic architecture student never really foresees, was the “structure”. Still besieged with a normal column beam structure system, it was going to be a rough patch discovering how my building would withstand the forces and the loads with a void in between. I tried very hard to find a generous solution for my structural conflict, taking help from professors, libraries, and the internet but all was in vain and it also made me realize that an otherwise vast campus in Punjab was like a tiny dot in the universe of architectural knowledge.
We as humans like to judge, we can never add to another person’s sentence, without omitting something from it. Now being associated with architecture for 12 years, I can easily conclude that “design is each to himself”. One can never entirely comprehend his or her proposal to another person and I was too sailing in the same boat. To buy an assuring and an encouraging nod from my lecturers and peers was another fight.
Taking both the challenges and after whiling away half of my semester, I finally met my guiding light, a Structure Engineer Professor who guided me as to how I can make my design cohesive with the structural part of it. He took me back to the very inception of this idea, that is, through the structure of the CCTV building. He made me read and see likewise documentaries to have a deeper intrusion into the basic strategy behind the concepts. In no time, I could reach innumerable options, like a thicker slab or a space frame or vertical braces that can materialize a vertical void in the building. After working on all the anomalies and permutations in the project, I was convinced that my design concept of the apartments having a vertical void acting like a “WINDOW” that will allow light, air, and views for all the residents would be very much conceivable. Sigh! It was not just a mirage.
However, the story of convincing my peers was still on the forward. Finally, the day of the Viva Voice came, I had made my best presentation sheets and an unexceptional monochrome model with green trees, pun intended. As soon as I came to my class, all my classmates were ready with a bombardment of questions, some logical and some very illogical. Suddenly, like hypnosis, I was swayed by them, that my design would not work without a “column” in the void that holds the weight of the slab. All my calculations, research, and imagination went spiraling down a whirlpool, and an unsolicited force, grabbed my hand to pick up a pencil, and draw “the missing column” in all my sheets, wherever the void was visible and I also hid my model in an abandoned classroom next to the Dean’s Office.
What a genius I was! But at unrest, convincing myself, that even though with a column, it’s still looking like a void. My Dean was new to the college and was a misfit, but an intelligent one at that. I was scared, not because I was not prepared, but because I “was” prepared, but now I wasn’t. Finally, my turn came, to bring me out of my perplexion he asked me to bring my model from that abandoned class, told you he was a misfit but an intelligent one. I bought my model, and was asked the most apparent question, where is “the missing column” in the model, and why is it scribbled with a pencil on your otherwise sparkling sheets. Eventually, I went on to explain how I had succumbed to my inquisitive yet ambitious design, to the beliefs of other people, because of my immature confidence, which is a quality not most of the aspired architects are worthy of. In the end, he laughed and so did the “others” and remarked that the only basic fault in your project was the use of green trees in an otherwise white model and the addition of “the missing column”, had it not been there we could have had a less funny discussion.
The truth is, I wasn’t laughing then, but I am now.
